Ideology

Ideologies are collectively held belief-systems which help actors to navigate a complex social reality. Arguably, all ideologies have a world-view which encompasses elements of international politics, although the transposition to this domain is not simple. Forms of ideological analysis have made headway into International Relations (IR) only relatively recently, owing to a combination of real-world developments and the relative theoretical decline of realism. Yet, these works have shown a myriad of connections between political ideologies and the ways in which actors think about – and seek to act upon – politics at the international level. Mainstream approaches have sought to utilise ideology as a variable in order to capture variations in real-world outcomes, while critical perspectives have sought rather to expose the power relations behind dominant modes of theorising the international. Recent efforts to expand the research agenda of ideology and IR have sought to look beyond states and political parties, explore emerging belief-systems and move away from Eurocentric assumptions and world-views.