Ideologies revised

Recent discussion of an article in one of my classes has led me to consider ideological application in elections. It is interesting to watch where voters put their trust during each election. Voters delegate the responsibility to run the country to agents, whom they trust will do well and make what they feel would be the best decisions for the nation as a whole. Because of this, we often find voters following after a candidate who shares similar ideology to them. Thus, politicians will do their best to be what the majority of voters would want them to be, have the ideology that most people prefer, or truly believe a certain way that is persuasive to voters that they are most fit for office and will make the best decisions.

An ideology is an internally consistent set of propositions that make both proscriptive and prescriptive demands on human behavior. All ideologies have implications for (a) what is ethically good; (b) how society’s resources should be distributed; and (c) where power appropriately resides (drawn from Hinich and Munger’s article Ideology and the Theory of Political Choice). In the practice of politics, they reward the large-scale organization which leads to centralization.  Ideologies eventually become a political battle of good vs. evil, and people use them to resolve disputes. These ideas cannot imply that something is both right and wrong. A problem voters run into is whether politicians will keep their promises on where they stand on issues and what they will do about the issues they will face.

Ideologies are an excellent way to hold politicians accountable to where they claim they stand on issues. They cannot move their position without discredit and/or discomfot. As voters, we need parties to help us get an idea of how a candidate will act based on what his or her ideology is. We are then left to depend on the candidate's promises or commitment to their ideological positions to guide their judgment. When we look for who want as our future politicians (like with the 2012 presidential election year), voters should not only consider whose ideology is like their own, but whose ideology will succeed at accomplishing overall good for the country. We simply cannot know what lies ahead in the future in terms of what policies will be considered. But, by knowing a candidates ideology, we can gain an understanding of where this candidate stands and have an idea of how they will act.