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Political Ideology as a Tool of Functional Analysis in Socio-Political Dynamics: An Hypothesis*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Léon Dion
Léon Dion*
Affiliation:
Université Laval
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Extract

There is so little agreement concerning theories of political ideology that it may be appropriate to devote some preliminary remarks to the main orientations of recent research. I shall then state the approach to political ideology which is adopted in this paper.

“Political ideology” has different meanings in the two principal fields of knowledge in which it is used: sociology and political theory. The ambiguity which results is the greater because neither of these disciplines has as yet integrated this notion into the main body of its operational concepts. If the Marxist school of thought be excepted, one may well state that the notion of political ideology plays only a secondary and marginal role as a tool of sociopolitical analysis.

Political theorists and philosophers generally view political ideologies as a part of the complex of forces which sustains the political structure or tends to its overthrow. For them, political ideologies are one of the means to power, or, as stated recently by Anthony Downs, of getting votes. This approach is adequate so far as it goes, but in my view it narrows the notion of political ideology to one of its most manifest functions in democracies. Furthermore, most such treatments of political ideology assimilate it to a pseudo-philosophy. When this pseudo-philosophy is considered good, it is said to uplift and educate the people; when it is considered bad, it is held to mystify and corrupt them.

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Articles
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Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , February 1959 , pp. 47 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1959

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Footnotes

1

This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in Edmonton, June 7, 1958.

References

1 An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York, 1957).Google Scholar For his treatment of political ideologies, especially in a democratic context, see Part II, 96–142.

2 However it should be clear that the labelling of a given ideology as ethically good or bad may simply denote an ideological preference on the part of the thinker. The moral character of an ideology is a very important question but research of this kind should not be conducted in such a way as to give the impression that it is a study in functional analysis. Apart from the ethical viewpoint, political ideology may be considered from many different angles. From a logical viewpoint, ideologies raise the problem of their internal coherence; there is also the most fundamental question of their truth. That ideologies constitute a distorted knowledge of reality has been known since Francis Bacon's famous theory of idols which he developed in his Instauratio Magna. The problem of ascertaining the degree of truth of an ideology has been a hard one to solve. Mannheim, in his search for objective knowledge, was induced to postulate a universal class sufficiently free from social conditioning to transcend the bias resulting from limited perspectives. Indeed, some writers have gone so far as to lay themselves open to the suspicion that all knowledge is distorted by ideologies except their own. For a criticism of this position, see Hallowell, John H., The Moral Foundation of Democracy (Chicago, 1954), Part I.Google Scholar It is evident that there is finally only one way of ascertaining the objective truth of a given idea and it has been known for a long time: to apply to it the rules of logic, the forms of judgment, and the tests of scientific evidence. See Hersch, Jeanne, Idéologie et réalité (Paris, 1956).Google Scholar As to functional analysis, it is specifically concerned with the vitality and utility of a given ideology and it furnishes materials and perspectives for other kinds of research in ethics, logic, epistemology, etc.

3 Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, Ill., 1949 Google Scholar; revised and enlarged, 1957). For relevant discussions by Merton see 1949 ed., Introduction to Part III and chaps, VII, IX.

4 I originally derived the notion of “cultural and mental complex” from Ernst Cassirer's monumental treatise, Philosophie der Symbolischen Formen (3 vols., Berlin, 1923–1929).Google Scholar Cassirer used the expression “symbolic form” to denote one or other of the constituent mental structures, such as language, mythical and rational thought, etc., by means of which reality is apprehended and reconstituted. By “cultural and mental complex,” I mean a cultural pattern of norms and values which is both objective (i.e. an element of the total culture) and subjective (i.e. an element of the mental structure).

5 Groethuysen, Bernard, Philosophie de la Révolution française: précédé de Montesquieu (Paris, 1956), esp. 212 ff.Google Scholar Ripert, Georges, Le Régime démocratique et le droit civil moderne (Paris, 1948).Google Scholar Garaud, Marcel, La Révolution et l'égalité civile (Paris, 1953).Google Scholar

6 This example is inspired by Watkins, Frederick, The Political Tradition of the West (Cambridge, Mass., 1946), 138 ff.Google Scholar See also Ripert, Georges, Aspects juridiques du capitalisme moderne (Paris, 1957)Google Scholar, and Laski, Harold J., The Rise of European Liberalism (London, 1936).Google Scholar

7 During the Old Régime in France, the term parlement was applied to certain courts of justice. It was rather in the Estates General that the parliamentary function was lodged. However, since this body was not assembled from 1613 to 1789, one may say that the French parliament (National Assembly) was born from the revolutionary act of the third estate when it decided to hold its meetings independent of the two other orders.

8 Considering the fact that many of the principles and conventions of British parlia-mentarianism had actually developed before the theorists came to express them in terms of the liberal ideology, this process could well be viewed as one of social pseudo-morphism.

9 In his The Symbols of Government (New Haven, Conn., 1935)Google Scholar, W. Arnold Thurman has studied the symbolism which has been elaborated in the United States about the Supreme Court. Thus, he says, the Court is adorned with a majesty which it would not possess if it were judged from the character of the judges who compose it, the interests it serves, the notions that inspire the judicial decisions, etc. Most discussions of the Crown, parliamentary ritual, court procedures, etc., also stress the importance of symbolism in British political practice.

10 Social Theory and Social Structure (1949 ed.), Part IV.

11 Leo Strauss has thrown a great light on this function of natural law: see his Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953), 86 ff.Google Scholar Also, Janet, Paul, Histoire de la science politique dans ses rapports avec la morale (Paris, 1925).Google Scholar

12 de Lagarde, Georges, La Naissance de l'esprit laïque au déclin du Moyen-Age (2 vols., Paris, 1947).Google Scholar

13 David, Marcel, La Souveraineté et les limites juridiques du pouvoir monarchique du IXe au XVe siècles (Paris, 1949).Google Scholar Also, Packard, Sidney R., Europe and the Church under Innocent III (New York, 1957).Google Scholar

14 The classical presentations of the theological and philosophical background of the mediaeval church-state relations are contained in the numerous works of Otto von Gierke and Etienne Gilson. For an excellent general study see Kohn, Hans, The Idea of Nationalism (New York, 1946), 61–115.Google Scholar

15 The notions of nature and natural law furnished their fundamental sedimentations to most political ideologies, conservative or revolutionary, of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See philosophical and historical discussions in Willey, Basil, The Eighteenth-Century Background (London, 1949)Google Scholar and in René Rémond, La Droite en France de 1815 à nos purs (Paris, 1954), 27, n.Google Scholar

16 The best study of Jacobinism from this angle is that of Talmon, J. L., The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London, 1952).Google Scholar

17 Roche, John P. and Stedman, Murray S. Jr., The Dynamics of Democratic Government (New York, 1954).Google Scholar

18 On this subject see Boorstin, Daniel J., The Genius of American Politics (Chicago, 1953, 1958).Google Scholar For an example of such an ideological valorization of political institutions and mechanisms in the United States see Gosnell, Harold F., Democracy (New York, 1948).Google Scholar

19 That political ideologies canalize social tensions and conflicts has been recognized by some recent authors. See, among others, Dahl, Robert A., A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago, 1956), 136–7Google Scholar; Roche, and Stedman, , The Dynamics of Democratic Government, 27 Google Scholar; Hallowell, , The Moral Foundation of Democracy, 71, 79, 91.Google Scholar It is suggestive to note that C. B. Macpherson attributes the same function to political parties. See his paper entitled “The Role of Party Systems in Democracy” presented at the Third Congress of the International Political Science Association, Aug., 1955, and his Democracy in Alberta (Toronto, 1953).Google Scholar

20 Burdeau, Georges, La Démocratie (Paris, 1956).Google Scholar

21 In his Scientific Man versus Power Politics (Chicago, 1946)Google Scholar, Hans J. Morgenthau has suggested that, in contrast to national politics, international relations have never outgrown the “pre-liberal” stage. Our own analysis of political ideology tends to confirm the radical differentiation which Morgenthau establishes between the national and the international spheres of politics.

22 See, e.g., Posnack, Emmanuel R., World without Barriers (New York, 1956).Google Scholar