This book is concerned with ideology, different ideological perspectives, our relationship with them, and how we may change that for the better. It is particularly concerned with political ideologies. These are two words that for many people may be more likely to feel alien and difficult than comfortable and familiar. Yet political ideologies affect all our lives, in many cases very deeply. While we may not realise it, it is difficult for any of us to escape ideologies for even a minute. They may seem like a distant, abstract idea, but they can enter every aspect of our lives, impacting in life and death ways. The big thing about ideologies is that we may not realise we are being influenced by them or even that we have them.

The book's aims

A key aim in this book, therefore, is to make connections between two ideas which seem to have increasing significance for us all: participation and ideology. While they seem to be closely interrelated and to have major implications for each other, so far efforts to explore the relationship of the two seem to have been limited. The purpose of this book is to change that. Both these concepts are important for politics and public/social policy. However, while some attempt has been made over recent years to look at the ideological underpinnings of public participation (for example, Simmons et al, 2009), the same has not been true of participation in relation to ideology. Yet, as will emerge, this can be seen as a major gap in the discussion of ideology, especially given the massive literature that has developed about it – and the intersecting interest in participation. It is almost as if it has been seen as unproblematic for the ownership of ideology to be narrow and unconsidered.

This lack of attention to participatory approaches to ideology is all the more interesting and surprising given the rising political and policy interest in participation itself. The latter in turn seems to cross over traditional distinctions between left and right of centre politics.