Ideology: A Definitional Analysis

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What does "ideology" mean? As a preliminary step to answering this muchasked question, I collected what seemed to be the most thoughtful and/or influential definitions circulating within the social sciences in the postwar decades. 1 A quick perusal of these definitions reveals the extent to which ideology remains a highly flexible conceptual tool (see Table 1). One is struck not only by the cumulative number of different attributes that writers find essential, but by their more than occasional contradictions. To some, ideology is dogmatic, while to others it carries connotations of political sophistication; to some it refers to dominant modes of thought, and to others it refers primarily …