Ideology

Ideology has been the subject that caught great attention during the last half of the twentieth century. Ideology has recurred as an important theme of inquiry among social, personality, and political psychologists. Ideology is one of few terms to have originated in political science, having apparently been developed by Count Antoine Destutt de Tracy, who survived the revolution to publish Elements d’Ideologie in 1817 (Hart 2002; Head 1985). The term has been contentious almost from its inception (Sartori 1969).

In fundamental term, an ideology is a belief or a set of beliefs, especially the political beliefs on which people, parties, or countries base their actions. It is a plan of action for applying these ideas.

In wider perspective, ideology can be explained as the way a system a single individual or even a whole society rationalizes itself. Ideologies may be idiosyncratic (Lane 1962), impractical, or even delusional, but they still share the features of coherence and temporal stability. In the view of Erikson & Tedin (2003), ideology is a “set of beliefs about the proper order of society and how it can be achieved”.

Napoleon used “ideologue” as a nickname to indicate irrational dedication to democratic principle. By the mid-nineteenth century, the main principle of the ideologues popular sovereignty was attacked from both the right (divine right) and the left (dictatorship of the proletariat). Marxist theory used the concept of ideology to define the process through which the dominant ideas within a given society reflect the interests of a ruling economic class. However, ideology has established a problematic notion, as many of its advocates have treated it as a relatively stable body of knowledge that the ruling class transmits wholesale to its subordinate classes. Marx confronted liberal democratic ideology, criticising it as a rationale for class oppression. The negative implication of ideology was reinforced by Karl Mannheim, who contended that ideology was inherently conservative because it derived its ideal model of society from the past and who contrasted it with utopian thinking, which he defined as future-oriented (Geoghegan 2004). David McLellan (1995) stated that ‘Ideology is the most elusive concept in the whole of the social sciences.’

Stuart Hall (1992) appraised several moments of theoretical “interruption” in cultural theories of ideology. These include the discourse theories of post-structuralism and postmodernism, on one hand; and the impact of feminist and critical “race” scholarship, on the other. The disruption of post-structuralism is important for foregrounding the salience of language as a medium of social power. In contrast, feminist theory contributes a notion of the personal dimensions of political power and highlights questions about gender. Similarly, critical “race” theory focuses on racialized patterns of power and destabilizes the class subject of ideology theory.

In the start of the twentieth century, the term ideology was rarely employed beyond limited references concerning political philosophy. This obscurity was apparent in the pages of the Review.

Basically, a political ideology is a belief system that provides a perspective on various political issues, such as the proper role of elected officials and the types of public policies that should be prioritized.