I have talked to a lot of people about the importance of political ideology for a party.
So what exactly is a political ideology? It's more or less similar to theory of a subject. Over the time scholars have come up with their views. I would present my view as in what I think political ideology actually means. Political ideology can be described as set of beliefs that defines optimum mode of social organization. It's not descriptive; rather it's more or less normative. An ideology proposes view of the world as it should be, irrespective of current or past state set ups. An ideology defines how an ideal government functions. It tells how a government should change or function in general. It presents a subjective view, and hence an ideology can never be acceptable by all. It's impossible to form an objective ideology.
Ideologies can be divided into Statism and anarchy, while Statism believes in establishment of laws, anarchism is based on assumptions that actions by people would be driven by ethics. In anarchy, an individual is not bound by any laws and rules and it is expected that his ethics would lead to goodwill of all, however that doesn't always happen. Ideologies, because they are subjective need constant refinement. These ideologies are then categorized on political spectrum, defined as left, center, or right wing based on their stance on role of government and individual in the society.
Political ideology for a political party is important at three steps:
- Formation of party
- Compilation of election manifesto
- Implementation of policies once the party comes to power
In India, there are a countless number of political parties. Some are formed to raise voice of a group of people while some are formed on foundation of a single issue. The number of parties existing in India is already significantly high, so we can safely assume that most of the issues concerning with the society are already taken up with same party or the other. Hence when a person works for a cause, there are always plenty of options available. However we see that there are new political parties emerging almost every other day. So what's the reason behind it? The person who forms the new party is either aspiring for a total control of power over the political party, or the person follows a completely new ideology that no other party follows until now.
Often people claim that the party they support doesn't belong to the political spectrum. But that's not true because mere formation of the political party is not the end. A party has to put forward its views and policies, in form of manifesto, and that's exactly where the ideology's role comes into picture. As I defined that ideology is a way an individual thinks that government should work, and while drafting manifesto, that's exactly what a political party does. It lays its plans in front of the people. Mow these plans are more or less outcome of the ideology the party follows. And people associate themselves with the party when they find similarity in ideology of the party and their own views.
When the party finally comes into power, it has to implement the policies. The working of the government is outcome of the ideology followed by the people who are responsible for the running of the government. Every person has its views, generally they are similar to the views of other members of the party, and hence these views translate into the policies of the government. It's safe to say that ideology of the party has the biggest impact on running of the government.
Since a party has to deal with all sorts of issue faced by the state, it has to have an ideology. The stance on all the millions of issues can't be defined separately, there has to be a pattern and that's exactly where the importance of ideology is felt. A party without an ideology cannot have a firm stand. It can't organize a debate at each and every point. Also it's easier to arrive at a common consensus when members of the party follow a similar ideology.
Hence over the time, based on the actions of the party, it can be categorized and placed into the political spectrum. Some parties promote their ideology right from the beginning. The trend is more evident in left liberal parties, where they inherit ideology by some scholar. Most of the parties however can be categorized by their actions.
Now the question arises, do we really need to assign a position in political spectrum to the parties concerned? In my opinion, yes, we cannot be sure of the way a political party would function unless we are clear what their position is on political spectrum. We can always tell the position of party on a small number of issues, but on a larger scale it is difficult to predict in absence of knowledge of ideology of the party. However if we are aware about the ideology a party follows, we can often predict the policies which the party would focus on once in power, and the actions wouldn't come as surprises.
Hence I believe it is important to be aware about the different political ideologies and based on that decide which party you should support. Supporting a cause does not help in long run, supporting the ideology is a safer bet.
