POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES

Basinillo, Perbielyn A. March 10, 2020

BSA 1-15 Politics and Governance

TAKE HOME QUIZ NO. 1

Five Definitions of Political Ideology

1. Political ideology is a systematic and all-embracing doctrine, which attempts to

provide a complete and universally applicable theory of human nature and society

along with a detailed program of attaining it. All political ideology is political

philosophy; however, the reverse is not true. The twentieth century has seen

several ideologies like Fascism, Nazism, Communism, and Liberalism. A

distinctive trait of political ideology is its dogmatism, which unlike political

philosophy, precludes, and discourages critical appraisal because of its aim to

realize the perfect society. Political ideology is a negation of political theory

because an ideology is of recent origin, and under the power of positivism is

based on subjective, unverifiable value preferences. Gamine, furthermore,

distinguishes a political theorist from a publicist. Every political theorist has a

dual role; that of a scientist and a philosopher and the method he divides his roles

will depend on his temperament and interests. Only through combining the two

roles can he contribute to knowledge in a worthwhile manner. The scientific

component of a theory can seem coherent and important, if the author has a

preconceived notion of the aims of political life. The philosophical foundation is

revealed in the manner in which reality is depicted. Political theory is

dispassionate and disinterested. Since a science, it describes political reality

without trying to pass judgment on what is being depicted either implicitly or

explicitly. Since a philosophy, it prescribes rules of conduct, which will close a

good life for all in the society and not for sure individuals or classes. The theorist

will not himself have a personal interest in the political arrangements of any one

country or class or party. Devoid of such an interest, his vision of reality and his

image of the good life will not be clouded, nor will his theory be special. The

intention of an ideology is to justify a scrupulous organization of authority in

society. The ideologue is an interested party: his interest may be to defend things

since they are or to criticize the status –quo in the hope that a new sharing of

authority will approach into being. Rather than disinterested prescription, we love

rationalization.

2. Political Ideology- refers to a consistent pattern of ideas or beliefs about political

values and the role of government. It includes the views people have about how

government should work and how it actually works. Ideology links our basic

values to the day-to-day operations or politics of government.

3. Political ideologies are pragmatic applications of normative theories. Liberalism,

conservatism, socialism, fascism, feminism, and environmentalism are examples

of political ideologies. Each ideology draws on the history of political theory and

seeks to apply the lessons of this history to the present.

4. Political ideology arose out of the transition from feudalism to industrial

capitalism. In simple terms, the earliest or ‘classical’ ideologies – liberalism,

conservatism, and socialism – developed as contrasting attempts to shape

emerging industrial society. This meant that the central theme in ideological

debate and argument during this period and beyond was the battle between two

rival economic philosophies: capitalism (see p. 131) and socialism. Political

ideology thus had a strong economic focus. The battle lines between capitalism

and socialism were significantly sharpened by the 1917 Russian Revolution,

which created the world’s first socialist state. Indeed, throughout what is

sometimes called the ‘short’ twentieth century (from the outbreak of World War I

to the fall of communism, 1989–91), and particularly during the Cold War period

(1945–90), international politics was structured along ideological lines, as the

capitalist West confronted the communist East. Although ideological debate has

become richer and certainly progressively more diverse since the 1960s, not least

as a result of the rise of so-called ‘new’ ideologies such as feminism and green

politics, the classical ideologies have retain their central importance. In large part,

this has been because of their capacity to reinvent themselves. In the process of

doing so, the dividing lines between them have often been blurred.

5. From a social-scientific viewpoint, an ideology is a more or less coherent set of

ideas that provides a basis for organized political action, whether this is intended

to preserve, modify, or overthrow the existing system of power relationships. All

ideologies therefore (1) offer an account of the existing order, usually in the form
 POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES

of a ‘worldview’, (2) provide a model of a desired future, a vision of the Good

Society, and (3) outline how political change can and should be brought about.

Ideologies are not, however, hermetically sealed systems of thought; rather, they

are fluid sets of ideas that overlap with one another at a number of points.

Definitions of Political Culture

1. Political culture- widely shared beliefs, values, and norms concerning the

relationship of citizens to government and to one another. It centers on democratic

values like liberty, equality, individualism, democracy, justice, the rule of law,

nationalism, optimism, and idealism.

2. Political culture is often seen as the foundation of all political activity, or at least

as a factor determining the nature, characteristics and level of political activity.

The concept of "political culture" includes historical experience, memory, social

communities, and individuals in politics, their orientation, skills, influencing the

political behavior. This experience contains a summary, transformed form

impressions and preferences in foreign and domestic policy.

3. Political culture is defined by the International Encyclopedia of the Social

Sciences (1968)81as "the set of attitudes, beliefs and sentiments that give order

and meaning to a political process and which provide the underlying assumptions

and rules that govern behavior in the political system". It encompasses both the
 POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES

political ideals and operating norms of a polity. Political culture is thus the

manifestation in aggregate form of the psychological and subjective dimensions

of politics. A political culture is the product of both the collective history of a

political system and the life histories of the members of the system and thus it is

rooted equally in public events and private experience".

4. A political culture is a product of many inter-related factors, traditional as well as

modern elements. Changes in political culture come under the influence of these

factors. A study of these factors is essential for an understanding of the political

culture. The political culture provides guides for political behavior, and for the

society as a whole, it constitutes a structure of values and norms, which helps to

ensure coherence in the operation of institutions and organizations. The stability

of a political system is underlined by the relative success or failure of the

assimilation of new attitudes into the existing value structure and for this there is

the need to examine the means of effective transmission of the political culture

from generation to generation. The political culture is the product of the history of

both the political system and the individual members of the system, and thus is

rooted in public events and private experience. By having establish and develop

political culture a nation will benefit in 40 various ways, shapes, and forms. In

this sense, the development of the concept of political culture is an attempt to

bridge the gap between micro and macro sociological analysis.

5. Harrison and Huntington (2000)85defined culture in purely subjective terms as

the values, attitudes, beliefs, orientations, and underlying assumptions prevalent

among people in the society. Political culture has been considered psychological

to the extent that it involves psychological constructs regardless of the reference

levels, that is, the individual of the aggregate.

6. Political culture refers to the values and political conduct of individual or

collective agents. As a concept it is as old as the analysis of politics itself.

Aristotle wrote about a “state of mind” that could inspire either political change or

stability; Machiavelli stressed the role of the values and feelings of identity and

commitment; Burke praised the “cake of custom” that enabled political

institutions to fulfll their aims; Tocqueville emphasizedmoeurs as the key

determinants of the character of a particular society. But the contemporary

understanding of political culture has been uniquely infuenced by Gabriel Almond

and Sidney Verba’s classic behaviorist formulation in Te Civic Culture (1963),

leading up to today’s multicausal, relational, and mixed methods approaches to

the study of the concept (Tompson, Ellis, & Wildavsky, 1990). As a result of this

methodological diversity, political culture has ceased to be narrowly identifed

with the attitudes toward government of political agents, to be measured in the

aggregate and then compared across political systems, or even more broadly

conceived as a process in which political meaning is constructed in the interplay

between the attitudes of individual citizens and the language and symbolic

systems in which they are embedded. Contemporary analysis of political culture is

a broad church, taking in everything from data collection on political opinions,

attitudes, and values conducted by means of structured interviews with

representative samples of citizens (e.g., Inglehart, 1997), to interpretive

approaches that use a range of qualitative methods to clarify how political

identities are generated, or how symbols and rhetoric can generate compliance or

confict, to discussions of why some ethnic identities become radicalized and

others do not. Te feld has become so broad, that it is hard to pinpoint what is

political culture and what is not.

Basinillo, Perbielyn A. March 10, 2020

BSA 1-15 Politics and Governance

TAKE HOME QUIZ NO. 2

MY POLITICAL IDEOLOGY

Socialism is a political ideology that is concentrated on human beings as social

beings united by common humanity. John Donne stated that no man is an Island entire of

itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

Socialists choose cooperation to competition, and favor collectivism over

individualism. Socialists consider that a measure of social equality is the essential

assurance of social stability and cohesion, and that it supports freedom in the sense that

it gratifies material needs and helps for personal development. The socialist movement

has conventionally articulated the interests of the industrial working class, seen as

systematically troubled or structurally disadvantaged within the capitalist system. The

objective of socialism is to lessen or abolish class divisions. It is elucidated in numerous

studies that socialism evolved as a reaction against the social and economic conditions

produced in Europe by the growth of industrial capitalism. The birth of socialist ideas

was closely associated to the development of a new but growing class of industrial

workers, who suffered the poverty and deprivation that are so often a feature of early

industrialization. Since two hundred years, socialism has established the principal

oppositional force within capitalist societies, and has pronounced the interests of

oppressed and disadvantaged peoples in many parts of the world. 

Socialism has its own features. First, it is categorized by public ownership. There

is a collective ownership of all mines, farms, factories, financial institutions, distributing

agencies, means of transportation and communications are owned and controlled, and

regulated by government departments. Small private sector also exists in the form of

small business units, which are carried in places for local consumption. Second, central

planning is supervised by central planning authority. It lays down objectives and targets

to be accomplished. Major economic decisions, such as the quantity to be produced, are

made by a conscious decision by a determinate authority based on a wide-ranging

survey of economic system as a whole. Third, there is a definite objective. The objectives

are concern on the aggregate demand, full employment, distribution of national income,

amount of capital accumulation, and economic development. Fourth, there is a freedom

of consumption. Consumer’s independence infers that production in state-owned

industries is generally governed by the inclinations of consumers, and the available

merchandises are distributed to the consumers at a fixed prices through the state-run

department stores.

4. Freedom of Consumption:

In socialism ideology, consumer's independence infers that production in state- owned

industries is generally governed by the inclinations of consumers, and the available

merchandises are distributed to the consumers at fixed prices through the state-run

department stores. Consumer's autonomy under socialism is limited to the choice of

socially beneficial commodities.

5. Equality of Income Distribution:

In a socialist economy, there is great equality of income distribution as compared with a

free market economy. The removal of private ownership in the means of production,

private capital accumulation, and profit motive under socialism avert the accrual of large

wealth of a few wealthy persons. The unearned incomes in the form of rent, interest and

profit go to the state which utilises them in providing free education, public health

facilities, and social security to the people. "As far as wages and salaries are concerned,

most modern socialists do not aim at complete and rigid equality. It is now generally

understood that the maintenance offered choice of occupation implies wage differentials."

6. Planning and the Pricing Process:

The pricing process under socialism ideology does not operate freely but works under the

control and regulation of the central planning authority. There are administered prices

fixed by the central planning authority. There are also the market prices at which

consumer goods are sold. There are also the accountings prices on the basis of which the

managers decide about the production of consumer goods and investment goods, and also

about the choice of production procedures.

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