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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 October 2015
Ideologies are important in modern politics. This is the standard reason political scientists give for studying them. In this article I provide another rationale for the study of ideologies: to promote democracy. This normative argument has been superceded by empirical ones, in part, because of the pejorative connotations of ideology. Those connotations are, however, based upon a selective history and hence an incomplete definition of the term. By reviewing that history, I recover a positive association between ideology and democracy. In the process, I hope to encourage political theorists to teach political ideologies.
The Oxford English Dictionary provides two standard definitions of ideology. The first is descriptive or neutral: ideology is the “science of ideas.” This definition, indeed the word itself, originated with Destutt de Tracy, a French Enlightenment philosopher. The second is critical or deprecatory: ideology is “ideal or abstract speculation” and “unpractical or visionary theorizing.” Napoleon Bonaparte, Tracy's contemporary, first used ideology in this pejorative sense. Both definitions are operative in contemporary political science.
Political scientists who study ideologies as “belief-systems” follow the first definition. For example, standard texts define ideology as “a set of closely related beliefs, or ideas, or even attitudes, characteristic of a group or community” or “a value or belief system accepted as fact or truth by some group.” These texts focus upon the various functions of ideologies, e.g., communication, legitimation, socialization, and especially mobilization.
My thanks to Larry Spence with whom this article is part of a continuing argument. I also owe thanks to Edward Artinian of Chatham House Publishers. His decision to publish my forthcoming reader Dogmas and Dreams: Political Ideologies in the Modern World encouraged me to develop these ideas.
1 Oxford English Dictionary, 1933, s.v. “Ideology.”
2 Plamenatz, John, Ideology (New York: Praeger, 1970), p. 15 Google Scholar; and Sargent, Lyman Tower, Contemporary Political Ideologies, 7th edition (Chicago: The Dorsey Press, 1987), p. 2 Google Scholar.
3 Funderburk, Charles and Thobaben, Robert G., Political Ideologies: Left, Center, and Right (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1989), p. 4 Google Scholar.
4 Macridis, Roy, Contemporary Political Ideologies, 3rd edition (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1986), p. 3 Google Scholar.
5 Baradat, Leon P., Political Ideologies: Their Origins and Impact, 3rd edition (New York: Prentice Hall, 1988), xii Google Scholar.
6 Macridis, p. 3.
7 Ibid.
8 Ingersoll, David and Matthews, Donald, The Philosophic Roots of Modern Ideology: Liberalism, Communism, Fascism (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1986), p. 7 Google Scholar.
9 Sargent, p. 11. Sargent also acknowledges that many political scientists use the latter two terms interchangeably.
10 Macridis' discussion of this translation process is interesting in the present context. He maintains that a philosophy becomes an ideology when it provides a framework for political action to meet social needs. He concludes that political ideologies “owe a debt” to political philosophies (p. 3).
11 Ashcraft, Richard, “Political Theory and the Problem of Ideology,” Journal of Politics 42 (08 1980), 687–705 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Barber, Benjamin, The Conquest of Politics: Liberal Philosophy in Democratic Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 7 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Thompson, John, Studies in the Theory of Ideology (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1984), p. 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 Antoine Destutt de Tracy, “Memoire sur la Faculte de penser,” MIN I 323, quoted by Kennedy, Emmet in “‘Ideology’ from Destutt de Tracy to Marx,” Journal of the History of Ideas 40:353–368, pp. 354-355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a more extensive discussion of Tracy see: Kennedy, Emmet, A PHILOSOPHE in the Age of Revolution: Destutt de Tracy and the Origins of IDEOLOGY (Philadelphia, Pa.: The American Philosophical Society, 1978)Google Scholar.
15 Biran to abbe Feletz, II thermidor X [July 30, 1802], Oeuvres de Maine de Biran, VI, 140, quoted by Kennedy, in “‘Ideology,’” pp. 357–358 Google Scholar.
16 Quoted by Kennedy, in “‘Ideology,’” p. 358 Google Scholar.
17 Napoleon, , “response a I'adresse du Conseil d'Etat,” in Moniteur, 21 12 1812 Google Scholar, quoted by Kennedy, in “‘Ideology,’” p. 360 Google Scholar.
18 Kennedy, , “‘Ideology,’” p. 364 Google Scholar.
19 A review of standard texts reveals the following. Macridis, the Dolbeares, [American Ideologies (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1988)]Google Scholar, and Ingersoll and Matthews do not provide histories of the term. Sargent refers in his history of ideology to the Ideologues who first coined it, but he does not mention Tracy or Napoleon. He does discuss Marx, Freud, and Mannheim. Funderburk and Thobaben credit Tracy with the term, but do not discuss his usage. They say that the term only gained “acceptance” with Marx and Mannheim. Baradat refers to Tracy as the “founder of ideology,” and provides the most extensive discussion of his ideas. He notes that ideology was originally a materialist science with socio-political improvement as its aim. Like the others, Baradat then focuses upon Marx and Mannheim. None of these authors discuss Napoleon's pejorative use of ideology or the positive association of ideology with democracy against which he was reacting.
In keeping with this, none proposes a positive usage of the term. The Dolbeare's do, however, suggest that “it is time to take American ideologies seriously as important political forces in their own right and to cease viewing them as symptoms of psychological maladjustment, emotional immaturity or antitechnological romanticism” (p. 5). Sargent also says, “We must ask ourselves: in what ways are we affected by ideologies? Do we have an ideology? What are its elements? How does it affect us? How do the ideologies held by others affect us? The answers to all these questions will affect the way we spend our lives” (p. 235). These comments offer some support for my positive interpretation of ideology.
20 Sigmund Freud, “The Future of an Illusion,” quoted by Rejai, Mostafa in s.v. “Ideology” in the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, vol. 2, 1973, p. 557 Google Scholar.
21 Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia, trans, by Wirth, Louis and Shils, Edward (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1948)Google Scholar.
22 Barber, Benjamin in The Conquest of Politics, p. 194 Google Scholar; Ball, Terence, Transforming Political Discourse: Political Theory and Conceptual History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 13 Google Scholar; Connolly, William, Political Science and Ideology (New York: Atherton Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Thompson, John, Studies in the Theory of Ideology, p. 7 Google Scholar.
23 Terence Ball makes this distinction in Transforming Political Discourse. He says, “The language of political discourse is essentially contestable, but the concepts comprising any political language are contingently contestable” (p. 14).
