¹ Cantoni, Remo, Illusione e Pregiudizio (Milano: Mondadori, 1967), p. 103 Google Scholar.

² Concerning the popularity it is symptomatic that while the 1930–1935 Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences did not include the item ideology, its successor, the 1968 International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, contains two articles on ideology. For the bibliography see Birnbaum, Norman, “The Sociological Study of Ideology 1940–1960: A Trend Report and Bibliography,” Current Sociology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962)Google Scholar; and Link, Kurt, “Bibliographische Einfurung,” in Ideologie, Ideologiekritik und Wissensoziologie (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1961)Google Scholar.

³ See the conjecture of Arne Naess that “the movement of the term ‘ideology’ into social science, social psychology and political science will, within a generation, be followed by a movement in the other direction. It will continue to be used in headlines, in summaries and popularizations, but scarcely in statements intended to express … theories, hypotheses or classifications of observations.” Democracy, Ideology and Objectivity—Studies in the Semantics and Cognitive Analysis of Ideological Controversy (Oslo: Oslo University Press; and Oxford: Blackwell, 1956), p. 171 Google Scholar. The book also reviews many current definitions of ideology, esp. pp. 141–198.

⁴ Marx and Mannheim are the obvious references, and the literature is extensive. See esp. Horowitz, I. L., Philosophy, Science and the Sociology of Knowledge (Springfield: Thomas, 1961)Google Scholar; and Maquet, Jacques J., Sociologie de la Connaissance—Etude Critique des Systèmes de K. Mannheim et de P. A. Sorokin (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1949)Google Scholar. A particularly brilliant criticism is Merton, Robert K., Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe: Free Press, rev. ed. 1957) chaps 12 and 13Google Scholar. See also Aron, Raymond, La Sociologie Allemande Contemporaine (Paris: P.U.F., 2nd ed., 1950) pp. 74–94 Google Scholar. My own position ( Democratic Theory, New York: Praeger, 1965, pp. 455–460 Google Scholar) is that the Mannheim type of sociology of knowledge attacks the consumer's end of the problem, thereby explaining the success, the spread of mental products. How mental products are produced is, however, an entirely different matter.

⁵ This is actually the major and more persistent controversy. The theme has been especially pursued by analytical philosophy. See Geiger, Theodore, Ideologie und Warheit: Eine Soziologische Kritik des Denkens (Stuttgart: Humboldt Verlag, 1953)Google Scholar; Bergmann, Gustav, “Ideology,” now in The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism (New York: Longmans Green, 1954)Google Scholar; Topitsch, E., “Begriff und Funktion der Ideologie,” in Sozialphilosophie zioischen Ideologie und Wissenschaft (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1961)Google Scholar.

⁶ This is called by Abraham Kaplan the “pattern model of explanation,” as against the “deductive model of explanation”: The Conduct of Inquiry (San Francisco: Chandler, 1964), esp. pp. 332–341 Google Scholar. The pattern model of explanation does not necessarily coincide with Hempel's “reduction to the familiar”: Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York: Free Press, 1965), pp. 430–433 Google Scholar.

⁷ Bell, Daniel, The End of Ideology, New York: Collier Books, 2nd rev. ed., 1962, p. 400 Google Scholar.

⁸ See Friedrich, C. J.: “It is confusing … to call any system of ideas an ideology … Ideologies are action-related systems of ideas …”: Man and his Government (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), p. 89 Google Scholar. In a similar vein Z. B. Brzezinski qualifies ideology as “essentially an action-program suitable for mass consumption”: Ideology and Power in Soviet Politics (New York: Praeger, 1962), pp. 5–6 Google Scholar.

⁹ Abraham Kaplan, op. cit., p. 327.

¹⁰ Kaplan contrasts notational and substantive terms as follows: “Substantive terms cannot be eliminated without loss of conceptual content, but notational terms are fundamentally abbreviations, and could be replaced”: op. cit., p. 49.

¹¹ I purposely avoid saying “explication” on account of the technical meaning attributed to the term by Carnap followed by Hempel, Carl K., Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1952), pp. 11–12 Google Scholar. For the sake of simplicity I equally neglect the more sophisticated test suggested by K. R. Popper with regard to the “informative content” of scientific statements: The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1959), pp. 119–121 Google Scholar. For an introductory overview see Nagel, Ernest, The Structure of Science (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 2: “Patterns of Scientific Explanation.”

¹² Rokeach, Milton, The Open and Closed Mind (New York: Basic Books, 1960), p. 35 Google Scholar.

¹³ The Social System (New York: Free Press, 1964 ed.), p. 349 (My italics)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ This applies also to the attempt, notably pursued by Bergmann and Geiger, to qualify ideology (vis à vis scientific truth) as any value judgement mistaken for, or disguised as, statement of fact. This view makes ideology far too broad.

¹⁵ Let alone the fact that the “integration” of a belief group may well be a “disintegration” vis à, vis other groups. We are forcefully reminded of this other side of the coin by Ben Halpern: “The function of ideologies … is … to segregate and consolidate competing groups around rival ideas”: “Myth and Ideology in Modern Usage,” in History and Theory, 1 (1967), p. 136 Google Scholar.

¹⁶ I paraphrase from Weidlè, Wladimir, “Sur le Concept d'Ideologie,” Le Contrat Social, (03 1959), p. 77 Google Scholar. The author speaks of ideology, but the sentence applies more directly to beliefs.

¹⁷ Contra, among others, Kluckhohn, Clyde, “Values and Value-Orientations in the Theory of Action,” in Parsons, T. and Shils, E. (eds.), Toward a General Theory of Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951), p. 432 Google Scholar: “Belief refers primarily to the categories, ‘true’ and ‘false,’ ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’.” This intellectualistic conceptualization overlooks the difference between idea and belief.

¹⁸ Converse, Philip E., “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” in Apter, D. (ed.), Ideology and Discontent (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), p. 207 Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Op. cit., pp. 39–51.

²⁰ Ibid., esp. p. 44.

²¹ Ibid., p. 57, and passim pp. 54–67.

²² If “liberalism” is conceived as an ideology, I suggest that it represents the ideological apex attained by the empirical mind; and surely liberalism has been a poor competitor, ideologically speaking, of socialism, communism, equalitarianism and the like.

²³ In this connection it should be noted that the ideologies of the developing nations and, in general, of the third world have been hardly nurtured and taught in London and Oxford, and even less in the United States. A perusal of Sigmund, Paul E. (ed.), The Ideologies of the Developing Nations (New York: Praeger, 1963)Google Scholar, suffices to confirm, in spite of nebulous and bizarre melanges, their unmistakably rationalistic Western source.

²⁴ Rationalism in Politics (New York: Basic Books, 1962), p. 11 Google Scholar. I cannot follow Oakeshott, however, in his positive identification of rationalism with technical knowledge. (“The sovereignty of ‘reason,’ for the rationalist, means the sovereignty of technique,” Ibid.) It seems to me, rather, that technical knowledge represents the point at which rationalism and empiricism converge. On its own premises, rationalism looks down at technical knowledge as an inferior knowledge.

²⁵ To be sure, Hegel's sentence had a dialectical circular formulation. But “the rational” is the subject: it is rationality that qualifies reality, not the reverse. Hegel's philosophy was a realistic rationalism, hardly a rationalistic realism.

²⁶ The rationalist matrix also explains the “logicality of ideological thinking” forcefully high-lighted—perhaps in an overly speculative vein—by Arendt, Hannah, “Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government,” in The Review of Politics (07 1953) 303–327 Google Scholar.

²⁷ The scheme is largely inspired by Robert E. Dahl, Ideology, Conflict and Consensus: Notes for a Theory (mimeographed), a paper prepared for the panel on “Consensus and Dissent,” VII IPSA World Congress, Bruxelles, September 18–23, 1967, p. 2. This essay is particularly indebted to Dahl's intellectual stimulation.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” loc. cit., p. 208.

³⁰ Jean Meynaud's book on the Destin dea Ideologies is actually a review and a discussion of the decline of ideology literature. See it. transl. Destino delle Ideologie, (ed Cappelli, ., 1964), esp. pp. 37–112 Google Scholar. Raymond Aron, Daniel Bell and S. M. Lipset are the standard references on the subject.

³¹ Another possibility is that the decline of ideology amounts—all other conditions remaining equal—to a convergence among different ideologies, either in the sense that the opposed “disbelievers” come to share a greater number of beliefs in common, or in the sense that the distinctive elements which oppose the various belief systems become feebly or more feebly held. This is the suggestion perceptively set forth by Dahl (op. cit., pp. 5–8). However, in this case the “decline” would be an optical illusion, for the process described ia, in reality, a mere process of growing “affinity” or of diminishing distance between two or more ideologies.

³² Dahl, op. cit., p. 3.

³³ As Converse puts it, loc. cit., especially pp. 210–211 and 241.

³⁴ Dahl, op. cit., p. 4.

³⁵ See Converse, loc. cit., p. 248: “Ideological constraints in belief systems decline with decreasing political information, which is to say that they are present among elites at the ‘top’ of political systems … and disappear rather rapidly as one moves ‘downward’ into their mass clienteles.”

³⁶ Ibid., p. 216.

³⁷ Ibid., p. 212.

³⁸ The distinction between “latent” and “forensic” is borrowed from Lase, Robert E., Political Ideology (New York: The Free Press, 1962), p. 16 Google Scholar. In line with my preoccupations, I would say that Lane's “latent ideology” can either become, at the forensic level, an ideological or a pragmatic type of political belief system.

³⁹ Dahl, op. cit., p. 2.

⁴⁰ Supra, Figure 2: “Typology of belief-elements.” For the present discussion the “inelastic elements” will be neglected.

⁴¹ Interest is understood here as the utility scale of each individual, as perceived by the interested party according to the culturally accepted standards of economic rationality.

⁴² The need, if not the inevitability of guidance is also the conclusion implicitly conveyed by the literature on the closed and open mind. In particular Rokeach brings out neatly the extent to which cognitive closedness is exposed to manipulation from the authorities.