What is an Ideology?

Ideology

A set of values and beliefs that structure how people think their broader societies and political institutions should be organized

What do ideologies provide people

A belief system that informs their preferences, choices, and actions → even in societies that have widely shared beliefs, individual beliefs will vary

Social Democracy

An ideology composed of societies with widely shared beliefs about the importance of distributing risk and protecting people from the costs of the market

Karl Marx’s view on ideologies

They obscure reality by indoctrinating people into a set of beliefs that keep them complacent and unable to critique the conditions they live in

Partisanship

A person’s affiliation with a specific political party

Discriminant validity

Definitions of concepts should not overlap in a way that misrepresents how they are related to one another

• in this context, ideologies should be specific enough that they do not overlap with definitions for political parties

Left ideology

Favour greater state regulation of the economy with greater redistribution of resources → e.g. communism

Right ideology

Favours less state regulation and less redistribution → e.g. conservatism

Populist

An ideology that is typically combined with other sets of values

Patriarchy and neoliberalism

Ideologies that are global in scope and powerfully shape all of our social interactions

Populism

An ideology with a set of values that has increased and decreased over time and is gaining momentum around the world

Democracy

An ideology with a set of values that underlies many political systems that are widely viewed as good, but is currently experiencing decline