The Analysis of Ideology in Political Theory and Political Science: Completing a Reconciliation

The study of ideology in political theory has been invigorated and promoted by the work of Michael Freeden (1996). Freeden’s influential work has attempted to move political theory from a ‘philosophical’ position emphasizing the logic of argument, and hence implying a degree of disdain and neglect of ideology for its lapses of logic, to a more ‘empirical’ one in which ideological thinking is recognized as an inevitable feature of political life and thinking, being the means by which frameworks that assemble political ideas achieve stability. The study of ideology in political science has also undergone something of an upsurge in recent years (Leader Maynard and Mildenberger 2016). Along with discussions of the dimensionality of the distribution of political attitudes (a topic which relates to Freeden’s conception of the packaging done by ideologies), there has been since the pioneering work of Converse (1964) a good deal of work exploring the absence of ideology, and exploring the social-psychological causal factors in political attitude formation. The topic of ideology would thus appear to lend itself more than most to a convergence of approach and conceptualization between political theory and political science, overcoming the destructive estrangement of these subdisciplines. However, the actual amount of mutual exchange remains very limited: the philosopher’s gesture towards empiricism approaches the work of the political scientists and psychologists, but contact has not yet been made. This paper will promote that fruitful convergence by pointing out some limitations in Freeden’s conception of ideology which, while distancing itself somewhat from the philosopher’s idea that ideology consists of inferential relationships, still suggests below this top layer of political cognition a situation of ‘ideology all the way down’. Our view is that non-ideology, consisting among other things of ‘non attitudes’, also needs to be seen as part of the spectrum of political cognitions and motivations, so that the kind of distinction that Freeden makes between philosophy and ideology has a complement at a lower part of the spectrum of political cognition. We draw both on Freeden’s own sources, especially Wittgenstein’s sociological account of meaning, and on the rich but as yet somewhat disorganized findings of attitude research, to produce a more comprehensive view of the spectrum of political cognition, thereby demonstrating the potential of Freeden’s reach towards the empirical when it is pursued beyond the current boundaries of normative political theory. Bibliography Michael Freeden (1996), Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach Oxford: Clarendon. Converse, Philip E. (1964), ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics’, in David Apter, Ideology and Discontent, New York: Free Press, 206-61. Jonathan Leader Maynard, Matto Mildenberger (2016) ‘Convergence and Divergence in the Study of Ideology: A Critical Review’. British Journal of Political Science: 1-27. Suggested theme: Philosophy and Other Disciplines