Lectures on Political Thinking and Ideology, Spring 2015, University of Kentucky, Intro to Political Theory

1. Thinking
Politically
Dr. Christopher S. Rice
Image (cc) 2005 Flickr user tsmyther

2. “Individuals engage in political
thinking when they seek to
determine which political ideas
offer more promise, which political
regimes best respond to particular
challenges, and which regimes
best meet the needs of people.”
~ Steven DeLue

3. Thomas Hobbes

4. John Rawls

5. (cc) 2007 Flickr user Gaetan Lee
(cc) 2006 Flickr user wallyg
(cc) 2006 Flickr user JoseJose
(cc) 2007 Flickr user rjzil
The Common Good

6. (cc) 2007 Flickr user law_keven (cc) 2006 Flickr user RobW_
Public vs. Private

7. RIGHTS OBLIGATIONS

8. Political Thinking means
TESTING
Political Ideas
(cc) 2007 Flickr user *maya*

9. Types of Political Theory

10. Empirical Theory
Describes, explains and
evaluates human life as it is
lived in community with
others, and predicts future
patterns of community life.

11. Normative Theory
Advocates (and criticizes)
certain ideals and values
about how humans ought to
live in community with others
and prescribes methods for
attaining (or avoiding) these
ideas and values

12. IS
vs.
OUGHT TO BE

13. Evaluative Theory
Theories which connect and
provide feedback between
empirical and normative
theories.

14. what IS
ideology?

15. “Ideology” is the
most elusive concept
in the whole of social
science.
~ David McLellan

16. “Study of” Ideas

17. Criticisms of ideologies
(Robert Putnam, APSR 65, Sept. 1971)

18. They provide ideas reflecting
people’s private interests rather
than more universal, public
interests. More specifically,
ideologies are the “weapons of the
ruling class” – ideas that allow the
most powerful members of society
to maintain their dominant status.

19. They oversimplify and thus
distort reality.

20. They conceal the way the
sociopolitical world really works,
camouflaging who most gains
and who most loses from
particular practices and
programs.

21. They are mere rationalizations to
justify programs that people hope
will work, even when there is a lack
of evidence to sustain these hopes.

22. They induce people to sacrifice the
present for unachievable utopian
goals.

23. They promote closed and rigid
thinking that is resistant to new
information.

24. They are based more on emotion
than reason.

25. They are based on paranoia, or
irrational fears about the motivations
and powers of some “evil” opponents,
leading to (a) simplistic evaluations
contrasting the forces of evil (“them”,
the other) against the forces of good
(“us”), (b) intolerance of everyone
who does not believe precisely as
“we” do, and (c) an unwillingness to
bargain and compromise with “them”.

26. They assert a moral and political
absolutism, dogmatically
insisting on certain principles
and behaviors and demanding
conformity to their “truths”.

27. They are extremist in that they
reject the established political,
social and economic institutions
and the stable benefits provided
by these institutions.

28. Antoine
Destutt
de Tracy

29. Ideology tends to be used
pejoratively
(cc) 2008 Flickr user Paul Denton Cocker

30. Karl Marx

32. Ideology is all about
delusion and “Mystification”

33. Ideology is linked to
the class system

34. Ideology is a
manifestation of power

35. Ideology is a temporary
phenomenon

36. Frederich Engels

37. “False Consciousness”

38. V.I. Lenin

39. Antonio Gramsci

40. Herbert Marcuse

42. Jurgen Habermas

43. Karl Mannheim

44. Ideology is a contested term
(cc) 2007 Flickr user JPhiipson

45. Ideology
A relatively coherent set of empirical
and normative beliefs and thought,
focusing on the problems of human
nature, the process of history, and
socio-political arrangements

47. How do we analyze
Ideologies?

49. “The left/right continuum…is itself
ideological. It serves the purpose of
bestowing a moderate or, respectively,
radical or even dangerous aura on an
ideology. It suggests that to move
among ideologies can be a gradual
process, and it indicates that
ideologies are mutually exclusive and
hence offer clear-cut alternatives.”
~ Michael Freeden

50. LEFT RIGHT
LIBERTY
AUTHORITY
Neo-conservatism
Free-market
Liberalism
Fascism
Libertarianism
Democratic Socialism
Social
Anarchism
Welfare-state
Liberalism
Communism

51. Communism
Socialism
Liberalism
Conservatism
Fascism
The Horseshoe Configuration

52. Liberalism
Communism Fascism
Socialism Conservatism
Welfare-State Free-market
The Pie-Shaped Spectrum

53. The 4 P’s of Ideology
Michael Freeden
Proximity Priority
Permeability
Proportionalit
y

55. Human Nature
(cc) 2008 Flickr user Alper https://flic.kr/p/5tXxze

56. Positive +
Negative
Freedom
(cc) 2005 Flickr user PakyuZ

57. The Triadic Model of Freedom
(from Ball and Dagger, Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal)
B.
OBSTACLE
A.
AGENT
C.
GOAL

58. IDEOLOGY AGENT(S) GOAL(S) OBSTACLES
Liberalism The Individual To live his or her own way, without
undue interference from others.
Laws, customs, or conditions which
block individual choice.
Conservatism Interconnected
Individuals
Order, stability, harmony,
continuity.
Radical ideas, innovation, passions,
desires, lack of restraint.
Marxism The common/
working people
Fulfillment of human needs, e.g.
satisfying work, fair share of
product.
Class divisions, economic
inequalities, unequal life chances,
“false consciousness.”
Fascism
(Italian)
The Nation-State The power and glory of the state. Individualism, independent groups,
class divisions.
Fascism
(Nazism)
The Aryan Race Racial Supremacy; “1000 Year
Reich.”
“Inferior races,” humanitarian ideas,
class divisions.