Political Ideology as a Tool of Functional Analysis in Socio-Political Dynamics: An Hypothesis

There is so little agreement concerning theories of political ideology that it may be appropriate to devote some preliminary remarks to the main orientations of recent research. I shall then state the approach to political ideology which is adopted in this paper. “Political ideology” has different meanings in the two principal fields of knowledge in which it is used: sociology and political theory. The ambiguity which results is the greater because neither of these disciplines has as yet integrated this notion into the main body of its operational concepts. If the Marxist school of thought be excepted, one may well state that the notion of political ideology plays only a secondary and marginal role as a tool of sociopolitical analysis. Political theorists and philosophers generally view political ideologies as a part of the complex of forces which sustains the political structure or tends to its overthrow. For them, political ideologies are one of the means to power, or, as stated recently by Anthony Downs, of getting votes. This approach is adequate so far as it goes, but in my view it narrows the notion of political ideology to one of its most manifest functions in democracies. Furthermore, most such treatments of political ideology assimilate it to a pseudo-philosophy. When this pseudo-philosophy is considered good, it is said to uplift and educate the people; when it is considered bad, it is held to mystify and corrupt them.