POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES

Political Ideologies

Political Ideologies

Introduction

Political ideologies are at the heart of politics. Real strengths around which configures all the political game, they also represent conceptual tools for thinking about politics. So they meet, like no other theoretical framework, the essential functions of making sense of political reality and a guide to political action (Claire, 2000).

The process that governs the organization is both synthetic and comparative. Synthetic, in that it aims first to uncover what constitutes the "big ideas" of each major ideological families. Comparative, as it then works to get in each of these families with each other, and that in order to better understand what makes their peculiarity. To this end, the book is based on a conceptual tool that allows a traditional classification of these eight major sets of ideologies along the same axis of reference, the left-right divide (Christopher & Laurence, 1997).

Discussion

Political ideologies can be reduced ultimately to four principles: liberalism, socialism, nationalism and anarchism. In political practice never found in pure form but combined in different ways. The purpose of this paper is to show that among the four fundamental ideologies no two opposing everything. One could say that they are equidistant from each other: in the most important issues, each other and match objects to the remaining two (Mostafa, 2001).

First classification criteria: Primacy of the individual or group

The man, as we know, lives in relation to other men. There is no society without individuals or individuals without society. Reflecting on this mutual relationship, some authors assign greater importance to one of the two terms and place the other on his service.

By this criterion, the four main political ideologies can be divided into two groups: the total, socialism and nationalism, which give priority to the group, and individualism, liberalism and anarchism, which give priority to the individual.

Second classification criteria: Acceptance or rejection of private property

Ownership of assets is a very important issue for intellectuals. Property regime depends, ultimately, the whole economic organization of society. Some authors understand that private ownership of the means of production lays the origin of all social ills, others, for their part, consider it essential for the functioning of the economy and for the effective exercise of individual freedom.

By this criterion, the four main political ideologies can be divided into two groups: those opposed to private property, socialism and anarchism, and those who are in favor of private property, liberalism and nationalism (Christopher ...