Taking Ideology Seriously: 21st Century Reconfigurations

Recent years have witnessed a resurgence of the "end of ideology" thesis, not as a theoretical stance but as a reaction to what appears to have been the decline of major ideological families, such as socialism, in a changing world order. Globalization, as well as internal national fragmentation of belief systems, have made it difficult to identify ideology in its conventional formats. This volume challenges the notion that we are living in a post-ideological age. It offers a theoretical framework for exploring some of the new manifestations of ideologies, and combines this with a series of case-studies relating to recent ideational phenomena, such as populism, environmentalism and Islamic fundamentalism. It reassesses some typologies, such as the left-right axis, as an explanatory device. This volume is unique in using ideology research to bring together different scholarly perspectives including party-political analysis, the history of ideas, postmarxism, and movement politics. The purpose of the essays is to revitalize the scholarly understanding of ideology as central to the concerns of political science. Recent political movements are reinterpreted through using new approaches to the analysis of ideology. In so doing we seek to bridge the gap between empirical and theoretical research in the field. This book was previously published as a special issue of" The Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy."