POLITICSINTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

WORLD AFFAIRS

POLITICAL IDEOLOGIESLEFT-CENTRE-RIGHT

IDEOLOGY, TRUTH AND POWER• Any short or single-sentence definition of ideology is likely to

stimulate more questions than it answers. Nevertheless, it provides a useful and necessary starting point. In this book, ideology is understood as the following:• An ideology is a more or less coherent set of ideas that provides the basis

for organized political action, whether this is intended to preserve, modify or overthrow the existing system of power.

• All ideologies therefore (a) offer an account of the existing order, usually in the form of a ‘world-view’, (b) advance a model of a desired future, a vision of the ‘good society’, and (c) explain how political change can and should be brought about – how to get from (a) to (b).

LIBERALS PERSPECTIVES ON IDEOLOGY• Liberals, particularly during the Cold War period, have viewed

ideology as an officially sanctioned belief system that claims a monopoly of truth, often through a spurious claim to be scientific. • Ideology is therefore inherently repressive, even totalitarian; its prime

examples are communism and fascism.

EXAMPLES OF LIBERAL IDEOLOGIES• National liberal parties

exist today, for instance in Austria, where the ideology is one of the three traditional ideological strains in the country, and Romania, where it is at the base of the oldest and second-largest political party of the country.

CONSERVATIVES PERSPECTIVES ON IDEOLOGY• Conservatives have traditionally regarded ideology as a manifestation

of the arrogance of rationalism. • Ideologies are elaborate systems of thought that are dangerous or

unreliable because, being abstracted from reality, they establish principles and goals that lead to repression or are simply unachievable. • In this light, socialism and liberalism are clearly ideological.

CONSERVATIVES COUNTRIES• Austria• Somalia• South Korea• United Kingdom• Colombia• Turkey• Singapore• Australia• Israel• United States

SOCIALISTS PERSPECTIVES ON IDEOLOGY• Socialists, following Marx, have seen ideology as a body of ideas that

conceal the contradictions of class society, thereby promoting false consciousness and political passivity amongst subordinate classes. Liberalism is the classic ruling-class ideology. • Later Marxists adopted a neutral concept of ideology, regarding it as

the distinctive ideas of any social class, including the working class.

SOCIALISTS COUNTRIES

FASCISTS PERSPECTIVES ON IDEOLOGY• Fascists are often dismissive of ideology as an over-systematic, dry

and intellectualized form of political understanding that is based on mere reason rather than passion and the will. The Nazis preferred to portray their own ideas as a Weltanschauung or ‘world view’, not as a systematic philosophy.

FASCISTS COUNTRIES• As of October 2014, there are no

countries that are considered fascist according to generally accepted definitions of fascism. There are several countries with significant, active fascist or neo-fascist movements and with some representation in national politics. Countries with fascist elements and ideologies present in their governments include Syria, Bulgaria, Armenia, Venezuela, Bolivia, France, Denmark, Greece, Spain, Ukraine, the Netherlands and Hungary.

ECOLOGISTS PERSPECTIVES ON IDEOLOGY• Ecologists have tended to regard all conventional political doctrines as

part of a super-ideology of industrialism. Ideology is thus tainted by its association with arrogant humanism and growth orientated economics – liberalism and socialism being its most obvious examples.

ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE COUNTRIES• Iceland• Switzerland• Costa Rica• Sweden• Luxembourg• Germany• Cuba• Colombia• Singapore• France

RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES ON IDEOLOGY• Religious fundamentalists have treated key religious texts as ideology,

on the grounds that, by expressing the revealed word of God, they provide a programme for comprehensive social reconstruction. • Secular ideologies are therefore rejected because they are not

founded on religious principles and so lack moral substance.

RELIGIOUS COUNTRIES• Among the 65 countries

surveyed by Gallup International, Thailand led the list of the most religious nations with 94 percent of the population considering itself to be religious. Armenia, Bangladesh, Georgia and Morocco followed Thailand in the ranking.

CATEGORIZE POLITICAL IDEAS AND IDEOLOGIES• Many attempts have been made to categorize political ideas and

ideologies, and to relate them to one another. • The most familiar and firmly established method of doing this is the

left–right political spectrum. • This is a linear spectrum that locates political beliefs at some point

between two extremes, the far left and the far right. • Terms such as ‘left wing’ or ‘right wing’ are widely used to sum up a

person's political beliefs or position, and groups of people are referred to collectively as ‘the left’, ‘the right’ and indeed ‘the centre’. • There is also broad agreement about where different ideas and

ideologies are located along this spectrum.

POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES• Political ideologies are in fact highly complex collections of beliefs,

values and doctrines, which any kind of spectrum is forced to oversimplify. Attempts have nevertheless been made to develop more sophisticated political spectrums that embody two or more dimensions. • The linear spectrum, for example, has sometimes been criticized

because the ideologies at its extremes, communism and fascism, exhibit similarities. In particular, communist and fascist regimes have both developed repressive, authoritarian forms of political rule, which some have described as ‘totalitarian’. • As a result, an alternative political spectrum might be horseshoe-

shaped, indicating that the extreme points on the left and the right tend to converge, distinguishing both from the ‘democratic’ beliefs of liberalism, socialism and conservatism.