Research on Mainstream Political Ideologies

Elijah Clark L. Agustin April 12,

2024

“Window dressing” of Political Life: A Discussion

on Mainstream Political Ideologies Across the
Spectrum

Whether we know it or not, humans are designed to act as political thinkers with
undeniable use of political concepts and ideas whenever we express what we have in mind.
Indeed, human language of words is littered by terms related to political ideologies that we are
seldom unaware of, importantly the ‘rights’, ‘justice’, ‘freedom’ etc., but regardless of
familiarity, what do we really know about these terms? How can we properly grasp the meaning?
For instance, the concept of equality is open to rivaling interpretations, most likely scholars think
of ‘equality’ as something that each one of us should have, but it is an idea that invites the
interpretation that equality is ideal in society because the demand to know what does really mean
if we say that all people are equal has not been settled, so how can we manage to resolve the
controversies? In order to investigate the mysteries of world, humans relied on religious beliefs
for explanations that provides medium of social control, harmony among people, sense of
belonging, and importantly, the manipulation of consciousness. Thus, I propose that political
ideologies that can be likened to religious beliefs attempt to influence the understanding of
people regarding on political phenomena. With rise of mainstream political ideologies, I submit
that these are tools we can use to examine the politics, describing it as a window dressing to both
conceal and represent in the best way the deeper realities of political life.

To define political ideology, it is a highly contested concept in political science for

example, it can be a coherent set of ideas providing a basis for organized political action whether
intended to preserve, modify, or overthrow the (political status quo) (Heywood, 2013). While for
Marxists’ perspective, ideology is from the class (bourgeoise) aiming to manipulate the
consciousness of marginalized sector (proletarians) to prevent the latter in recognizing their own
exploitation. Lastly, for conservative’s lens Michael Oakeshott (p. 85) proposed the idea that ‘In
political activity, men sail in a boundless and bottomless sea’ Rationalism in Politics (1962), for
him ideologies only distort our political reality as these ideas are claiming to explain the
incomprehensibility of political activity, certainly the world is made up of complexities beyond
the comprehensibility of humans. Nevertheless, by simply looking through different lenses it
outlines how political changes can and should be brought about, as window dressing these offer a
model of a desired future, and vision of a good society. Thus, it is my burden to mention in this
paper some of ideologies in the spectrum and those that commit to engage in peaceful
democratic participation, to prove my claim of ideologies as means to conceal and represent the
realities, with a reference of various German Political foundations as examples.

Across the political spectrum, there are terms including ‘centrist’, ‘left’, and ‘right’, that
with each there are mainstream ideologies that take refuge. The origins of these terms began in
French Revolution during the meeting of Estates General in 1789, the terms ‘left & right’ is a
division of reaction from which those who were preferred to keep a strong monarchy sit on the
right side of the monarch, while people that were more or less open to compromise were on the
center, and those interested in democracy were on the left. In simpler terms, those in the left-
wing thinking are more of welcoming change and usually anchored on ideas of progress and the
right-wing thinking are more of defending the status quo, and tend to resist for change. The
figure below shows the visualization of spectrum, in a linear form all ideologies contain rival or
contradictory elements. For instance, the right-wing is not only a refuge of center-left/right, it has
extreme ideologies or those in the far left including communism and anarchy, same case of
center-right/left it has extreme ideologies such as Nazism and Fascism.

Figure 1.0
 Nonetheless, to better understand the mainstream political ideologies that promotes
peaceful democratic participation, it is best to reference the German soft power politics via its
political foundation. This is for several reasons, importantly the longevity of organizations that
dated back in late 1920s and their well-known diplomatic, academic, and political active roles in
the world (Adick & Giesemann, 2015) with each political foundations are affiliated with specific
political parties. To exemplify, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) a social democratic party in
1925 and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) a Christian democratic union in 1955, both has a long
tradition of political activism that in fact, another similarity is on their value of political
education that operates beyond their borders. One of the projects of FES is to campaign “Against
Right-Wing Extremism” with activities on dialogue for democracy, labor welfare, and the
promotion of networking. For the past years it promotes dialogue in Nepal’s environment of
good governance, civic education, and emphasis in roles of NGOs and civil society. Besides,
KAS is mainly active in Nigeria, India and Philippines with 37 programs on social market
economy, free democracy, and exchanges between cultures and religions abroad. Furthermore,
the Hanns Seidel Stiftung (HSS) in 1967 that lean on Christian social union principles, with
strong presence in Ukraine. It has operational offices with fields of activity concentration on
scholarly research, seminars on diverse topics, evaluation of development cooperation that
focuses on good governance, democratic-building, and self-help sustainable development. There
are also programs for socially talented academics under HSS Institute for Scholarship Programs
and lastly, it works on as mediator of Europe with USA and Canada.

Similarly, the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (FNS) in 1958, has the reflection of
liberalism. It had been active in Latin America, and re-shifted the focus on Eastern European
Regions with efforts mainly on sectors for adult education, political dialogue, self-help
organizations, and the media assistance. However, its main priority of work is on supporting
students for scholarship especially those with keen interest of political affairs, that would foster
research, analysis, and debates in their political interactions. In Manila, it currently collaborates
with Commission on Human Rights, Rappler, Philippine Economic Society, and Impact
Leadership for climate change, human rights, digital society and social market economy.
However, with emergence of postindustrial societies, rise of social movements, active role of
globalization and the collapse of communism with changing global order, spearheaded new
ideologies for the old ones. As an example, the existence of green ideology in domestic and
international level that campaigns on the belief that nature embraces both humans and non-
humans, believing that classic ideas failed to commit on nature, and misled that human are
centerpiece of nature, (Heywood, 2017). This ideology has been embedded in Heinrich-Böll-
Stiftung (HBS) founded in 1977, at present this is the youngest German political foundation.
Today, it closely works on issues surrounding the war in Ukraine, women’s rights in Iran,
refugees of Afghanistan, and calamities in commit to responsibility of taking action to prevent
the destruction of global ecosystem, security-peace in crises zones, and freedom. Besides, it
promotes inclusion of ethnic minorities for policy-making decision and participation of
immigrants that would lead in democratic reforms, social innovation, and as a global network it
is engaging in policy network for the development of green movement in all continents.

Lastly, the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS) founded in 1990, with strong linked in Die
Linke of a socialist party in Germany. Among the discussed mainstream in this essay, RLS is the
unique due to its commitment on radical perspective that emphasizes on workers’ and women
movement that also fights against fascism and racialism. One of the interesting progressive
actions of RLS is on the partnership with local in Palestinian Civil Society based in Israel, as it
invests in areas of social justice, demilitarization, critical culture/history, and feminism. RLS
attempt to have a power sharing institution to include social, ethnic and national groups for
solution in an ongoing Israeli-Hamas conflict. In its journey since 1999, it granted scholarship
for political education to empower the disadvantaged groups and conflict prevention, making
European Union to see RLS as pioneer and donor of development aid with staunch commitment
in upholding peace.

Above all, the deliberation of mainstream ideologies via referencing the German political
foundations give us overviews, as to how best represent the ideals that everyone of us want
including ‘justice, freedom, human rights, welfare, development’ etc., and with each
foundation’s active civic involvement beyond borders, offers us that what might seem
unachievable, and quixotic in our eyes, can become reality being guided by these windows
dressing as to how change and action to be brought about. They share similarities on their values
and missions of promoting democratic participation in Germany, Europe, and beyond backyards
working for civic education, funding of studies, fostering research and advice additionally, its
unrelented willingness of international cooperation. In this case, ideologies are product of
humans with bizarre curiosity that historically attempted to conceal their ideal vision for world
and to understand the abyss reality of political life. As my concluding words, I would like to
paraphrase the idea of Michel Foucalt’s (1991) words that ideologies are ‘regimes of truth’ it
helps us to uncover and investigate politics with language and platform of discourse backed by
their distinct assumptions and presuppositions on how our society should work and be modeled.

REFERENCES:

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 Oakeshott, M. (1962). Rationalism in Politics
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