Political parties are groups of like-minded individuals who seek to realize their shared goals by fielding candidates at elections and thereby securing election to public office. Most conventional parties would ultimately aim to emerge victorious at a general election, and thereby earn the right to form a government. In this respect, parties differ significantly from pressure groups, for while some pressure groups employ electoral candidacy as a means of raising public awareness of their chosen cause, they generally have little interest in being in office.
A political party has to have mass and inclusive membership as well as a formal structure that extends from the Village/Town/Municipality through Tehsil/Taluk and Zila/District to the State and National level, paralleling the administrative structure of government. It is little wonder that founding a viable political party is such a daunting task in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-language country like India. Does it need a formal organization? What form or shape will such an organization take? How will it be funded? What will be the vision, the glue that will sustain it through its critical life cycle phases of inception, infancy and growth?
Ideology has to be the critical underpinnings of such an organization. Or does it? Should vision be based on ideology? So what is ideology?
Sure. But how do you find a set of people with a common set of ideas? Is it something that can be proposed by a dominant class of a society to all members of the society, a "received consciousness", a product of socialization?
A political ideology is a certain ethical set of ideals, principals, doctrines, myths, or symbols of a social movement, institution, class or a large group that explains how society should work, offers some political and cultural blueprint for a certain social order.
Political ideology largely concerns itself with how to allocate power and to what ends it should be used. Some parties follow a certain ideology very closely, while others may take broad inspiration from a group of related ideologies without specifically embracing any one of them.
Political ideologies have two dimensions:
1. Goals: how society should work
2. Methods: The most appropriate ways to achieve the ideal arrangement
Typically, each ideology contains certain ideas on what it considers to be the best form of government (democracy, theocracy, caliphate etc) and the best economic system (capitalism, socialism, communism, etc).
Ideologies also identify themselves by their position on the political spectrum (left, centre, right) though it is rare for a political party to hold one position on the spectrum. A position is more likely to be associated with an issue, rather that with its ideology. Of course, the bi-axis model (figure below, based on Nolan's chart) is often used to better explain the concept of an ideological spectrum.
Ideologies can also be distinguished from political strategies (eg, populism) and from single issues that a party may be built around (for eg., eliminating corruption).
Philosopher Michael Oakeshott provides a good definition of ideology as:
Ideologies are systems of abstract thought applied to public matters and thus makes this concept central to politics. Even if not explicitly expressed, implicitly, every political tendency entails an ideology.
But then we have had political ideologies for eons.
Are we any better as a society for it?
Is there a better model?
REFERENCES
1. Rethinking political ideologies: Chiarelli, Salvatore [2009]
2. Links in "Ideology Study Guide"
3. Lenin and philosophy and other essays; Louis Althusser [1971]
4. Ideology and Symbolic Power: Between Althusser and Bourdieu [2009]
A political party has to have mass and inclusive membership as well as a formal structure that extends from the Village/Town/Municipality through Tehsil/Taluk and Zila/District to the State and National level, paralleling the administrative structure of government. It is little wonder that founding a viable political party is such a daunting task in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-language country like India. Does it need a formal organization? What form or shape will such an organization take? How will it be funded? What will be the vision, the glue that will sustain it through its critical life cycle phases of inception, infancy and growth?
Ideology has to be the critical underpinnings of such an organization. Or does it? Should vision be based on ideology? So what is ideology?
"An ideology is a set of conscious and unconscious ideas that constitute one's goals, expectations and actions."
Sure. But how do you find a set of people with a common set of ideas? Is it something that can be proposed by a dominant class of a society to all members of the society, a "received consciousness", a product of socialization?
A political ideology is a certain ethical set of ideals, principals, doctrines, myths, or symbols of a social movement, institution, class or a large group that explains how society should work, offers some political and cultural blueprint for a certain social order.
Political ideology largely concerns itself with how to allocate power and to what ends it should be used. Some parties follow a certain ideology very closely, while others may take broad inspiration from a group of related ideologies without specifically embracing any one of them.
Political ideologies have two dimensions:
1. Goals: how society should work
2. Methods: The most appropriate ways to achieve the ideal arrangement
Typically, each ideology contains certain ideas on what it considers to be the best form of government (democracy, theocracy, caliphate etc) and the best economic system (capitalism, socialism, communism, etc).
Ideologies also identify themselves by their position on the political spectrum (left, centre, right) though it is rare for a political party to hold one position on the spectrum. A position is more likely to be associated with an issue, rather that with its ideology. Of course, the bi-axis model (figure below, based on Nolan's chart) is often used to better explain the concept of an ideological spectrum.
Ideologies can also be distinguished from political strategies (eg, populism) and from single issues that a party may be built around (for eg., eliminating corruption).
"the formalized abridgement of the supposed sub-stratum of the rational truth contained in the tradition".
Ideologies are systems of abstract thought applied to public matters and thus makes this concept central to politics. Even if not explicitly expressed, implicitly, every political tendency entails an ideology.
But then we have had political ideologies for eons.
Are we any better as a society for it?
Is there a better model?
REFERENCES
1. Rethinking political ideologies: Chiarelli, Salvatore [2009]
2. Links in "Ideology Study Guide"
3. Lenin and philosophy and other essays; Louis Althusser [1971]
4. Ideology and Symbolic Power: Between Althusser and Bourdieu [2009]
