ABSTRACT
As John McCormick wrote, “If a competition were to be held for the most commonly used and most frequently misunderstood terms in political science, ideology would make a strong running against terms such as state, democracy, and freedom” (McCormick 2001: 366). In fact, ideology is such a slippery concept that some comparative politics scholars avoid it altogether, preferring instead to write about political preferences, cleavages, or culture. But like state, democracy and freedom, ideology is a concept we must grapple with because without it, many aspects of political behavior are impossible to understand. Explaining politics in terms of interests alone is a tortured exercise; from the most basic questions – why do people vote? – to the most complex, ideology is helpful where interest-based explanations fail. It is also key to explaining the origins and drivers of policy preferences, as well as (some of) the seemingly irrational decisions politicians and citizens routinely make.
