section_path: Political ideologies
section_name: Political ideologies
paragraph_text: Political ideologies
  
  In political science, a political ideology is a certain ethical set of ideals, principles, doctrines, myths, or symbols of a social movement, institution, class, or large group that explains how society should work, offering some political and cultural blueprint for a certain social order. Political ideologies are concerned with many different aspects of a society, including but not limited to: the economy, the government, the environment, education, health care, labor law, criminal law, the justice system, social security and welfare, public policy and administration, foreign policy, rights, freedoms and duties, citizenship, immigration, culture and national identity, military administration, and religion.
  
  Political ideologies have two dimensions:
  
  A political ideology largely concerns itself with how to allocate power and to what ends power should be used. Some parties follow a certain ideology very closely, while others may take broad inspiration from a group of related ideologies without specifically embracing any one of them. Each political ideology contains certain ideas on what it considers the best form of government (e.g., democracy, demagogy, theocracy, caliphate etc.), scope of government (e.g. authoritarianism, libertarianism, federalism, etc.) and the best economic system (e.g. capitalism, socialism, etc.). Sometimes the same word is used to identify both an ideology and one of its main ideas. For instance, socialism may refer to an economic system, or it may refer to an ideology that supports that economic system. Post 1991, many commentators claim that we are living in a post-ideological age, in which redemptive, all-encompassing ideologies have failed. This view is often associated with Francis Fukuyama 's writings on the end of history. Contrastly, Nienhueser (2011) sees research (in the field of human resource management) as ongoingly "generating ideology".
  
  There are many proposed methods for the classification of political ideologies. Ideologies can identify themselves by their position on the political spectrum (e.g. left, center, or right). They may also be distinguished by single issues around which they may be built (e.g. civil libertarianism, support or opposition to European integration, legalization of marijuana). They may also be distinguished by political strategies (e.g. populism, personalism). The classification of political ideology is difficult, however, due to cultural relativity in definitions. For example, "what Americans now call conservatism much of the world calls liberalism or neoliberalism "; a conservatism in Finland would be labeled socialism in the United States.
  
  Philosopher Michael Oakeshott defines single-issue ideologies as "the formalized abridgment of the supposed sub-stratum of the rational truth contained in the tradition". Moreover, Charles Blattberg offers an account that distinguishes political ideologies from political philosophies.
  
  Slavoj Žižek argues how the very notion of post-ideology can enable the deepest, blindest form of ideology. A sort of false consciousness or false cynicism, engaged in for the purpose of lending one's point of view the respect of being objective, pretending neutral cynicism, without truly being so. Rather than help avoiding ideology, this lapse only deepens the commitment to an existing one. Zizek calls this "a post-modernist trap". Peter Sloterdijk advanced the same idea already in 1988.
  
  Studies have shown that political ideology is somewhat genetically heritable.