CHAPTER 13 WHY POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES MATTER
PREVIEW In this concluding chapter, we return to the issue of the nature of political ideologies. However, whereas the purpose of Chapter 1 was to provide a general introduction to the subject, by examining, for example, debates over the meaning of ideology, the relevance of the left/ right divide, the rise of so-called ‘new’ ideologies and the idea of ‘end of ideology’, the present chapter reflects on the impact of ideology – for
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Why we need political ideologies Do ideologies matter too much?
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Choosing between ideologies 271 Questions for discussion 271
good or ill – on the wider political process. Why do political ideologies matter? We need political ideologies for a number of reasons. Mostly importantly, they provide politicians, parties and other political actors with an intellectual framework which helps them to make sense of the world in which they live. Ideologies are not systematic delusions (as many commentators have claimed) but, rather, rival versions of the political world. Each ideology illuminates particular aspects of a complex and multifaceted reality. In that sense, ideologies operate as paradigms: they guide the process of intellectual enquiry by providing a set of values, theories and assumptions within which the search for knowledge is conducted. Ideologies play a number of other roles. These include ensuring that politics has an ethical or emotional dimension, in that what ‘is’ is always linked to what ‘ought to be’; and helping to forge a sense of the collective, by embedding the individual within a social context. However, there is a sense in which political ideologies maymatter too much. Each use of political ideology may, in some way, be abused. For example, paradigms that structure and inform our search for knowledge may also foster tunnel vision and even become intellectual prisons. For a variety of reasons, it may be difficult, and perhaps impossible, to think ‘outside’ or ‘beyond’ our favoured ideological tradition. Moreover, because ideologies tend to blur the distinction between truth and falsehood, there is, in the final analysis, no reliable way of ‘proving’ that one political ideology is better than any other ideology. Finally, in the process of forging a sense of collective belonging, political ideologies typically conjure up the image of a distrusted, feared or hated ‘other’, bringing conflict and polarization in its wake.
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