The legitimate exercise of authority to maintain order, set up rules for settling disputes, promote the common welfare, and apply force to maintain obedience and loyalty to the social norms and values of society is institutionalized in the government.
The underlying fabric of authority is ideology. An ideology is a system of values, ideas, beliefs, and attitudes that a society or groups within it share and accept as truth or fact; it contains a set of attitudes towards the various institutions and processes of society. According to Lawson 1989, ideology is a comprehensive set of beliefs and attitudes about social, economic, political, cultural, and educational institutions and processes. It offers a critique of the existing system and a view of the ideal system. It also presents a theory of human nature and theory of human potentiality and of the need for particular modes of social control. Political ideology attempts to offer answers to the following questions: How and why has a political system taken the form it has? How did a political system come into existence? What would be the nature of the ideal political system? What would be the government role in the political economic, social, cultural, educational life of the society and its international relations? These are political questions, the answers to which are offered by a political ideology.
Four major ideologies are conservatism, liberalism, socialism, and fascism (Lawson, 1989)
1. Conservatives believe in conserving what exists and the preservation of the status quo. Conservatives maintain, “The accumulated wisdom and experience of the countless generations gone is more likely to be right than the passing fashion of the moment.” They have a non-egalitarian view of human nature, believing that some people are born into “a natural aristocracy” and that those people can best protect the individual liberty of all. They believe in the preservation of traditional moral standards and values, in the responsibility of the more advanced nations to bring the blessings of civilization to those less fortunate, and in the necessity of maintaining good relations with allies as a means of protecting one’s own system against external enemies. The basic principles of conservatism are: order, continuity, and loyalty, protection of individual freedoms, piety, and nationalism. Contemporary conservative leaders include British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and West German Chancellor Helmet Kohl.
2. Liberals believe that all human beings are capable of reason and rational action and should be helped by their governments to fulfill their potential. However, such help should never be forced upon unwilling citizens. It is also an important value to maintain personal freedom. As much as liberals would like to create an egalitarian society, they are unwilling to invade individual rights in order to do so. Thus, they hold two beliefs that are in practice extremely difficult to reconcile. Liberals commonly believe in some form of social contract – that is, in the idea that human beings consent to be ruled by others, but only on condition that individual rights and liberties are maintained. Liberals believe, however, that political change should be made through peaceful, not revolutionary, means.
3. Socialists believe that human beings are naturally sociable and cooperative, and that only the establishment of nonsocialist governments and exploitative work arrangements has interfered with these natural instincts. They believe that the solution is to limit or abolish outright the institution of private property – which, they say, should be owned by a state that is, in turn, controlled by the workers. Socialism and its severe variants is the governing force in the Soviet Union, China, Mongolia, North Korea, North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Albania, and Yugoslavia. The world has seen seven varieties of Socialism. These include: First, Utopian Socialism envisioned by French philosophers Henri Comte de Saint – Simon (1760 - 1825) and Charles Fourier (1772 - 1837); and Englishmen Robert Owen. Second, Marxist Socialism (1818 - 1883), based on the writings of Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels (820 - 1895), who envisioned the fall of exploitative capitalism through the proletarian revolution, the establishment of socialism, the withering away of the state and moving without fail to the highest possible form of socialism, “communism”. Third, Soviet Communism, led by Vladimir Lenin (1878 - 1924), who worked to bring about the Russian Revolution of October 1917; Fourth, Chinese Communism, under the personal guidance of Mao Zedong (1893 - 1976) who instituted guerrilla warfare as an instrument of political change, as a tool of military takeover, developing a “mass line” of action supported by the masses, and reliance on national ideals and efforts rather than on foreign models.
Fifth, as envisioned by the so called Fabian Socialists in England led by Beatrice Webb (1858 - 1943) and Sidney Webb (1859 - 1947), Democratic or Revisionist Socialism, also revisionist, moderate socialism, or bourgeois revisionism or even right-wing counterrevolution, which believes that revolution is not essential to achieve the ideal society in which workers control the state; and that the chief task is to organize the working class, develop its consciousness and give it a voice in local and national governments.
Sixth, anarchism, is the political ideology envisioned by William Godevin (1756 - 1836) of England, Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809 - 1865) of France, Mikhail Bakeinin (1814 - 1876) and Petr Kropotkin (1842 - 1921) of Russia. Anarchism shares with other early varieties of socialism an emphasis on the development of small, autonomous communities and that the only way to breakdown the patterns of exploitation is to eliminate the state and base social organization on cooperative voluntary activity, where no person should have the right to exercise authority over another person, and where everyone would understand the need to share both goods and work fairly. Seventh, syndicalism, which is a close cousin of anarchism. The chief differences are that syndicalism sees the trade union, rather than the small community, as the organization best qualified to replace the modern state and allow workers to assume control of their own affairs, and believes that the means to achieve this desired end is “the general strike” – a strike of nationwide, if not worldwide, proportions, which will bring all normal activity to a complete halt and force those in charge to cede power to the trade unionists. A leading proponent of syndication is Georges Sorel (1847 - 1922)
4. Fascism begins by arguing that the citizen can prosper only when the nation prospers and ends up placing the fate of the nation above that of its people. Like conservatives, fascists think that some human beings are naturally better than others, but for them being better means belonging to the “right” race or nationality. They think human beings are motivated by their emotions, not by their reason, and by the struggle for survival. Under fascism, all human interactions – including economic exchange – are necessarily subject to the absolute discipline of the state and its leaders. The fascist government of Alberto Mussolini of Italy and that of Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany are classic examples.
Other political concepts which are mistaken as ideologies and whose meanings are frequently misused, oversimplified and labelled include the terms: left, right, authoritarian, totalitarian, nationalistic, and democratic.
- Left – means taking a positive view of human nature and believing that change and progress are necessary and possible to improve the human condition.
- Right – means taking a somewhat more pessimistic view of human nature and placing greater emphasis on the importance of maintaining order and continuity.
- Authoritarian and Totalitarian – refer to political systems in which political power is concentrated in the hands of a few, the difference being that in a totalitarian system more effort is made to exercise that power in all domains of human existence.
- Nationalism – is the conviction that national interests are more important that private of international interests and does not constitute a separate ideology.
- Democracy – is a description of the relationship between citizens and their leaders and associated with conditions of personal freedom, free elections, and political equality. The literal meaning of democracy is simply rule by the people.
