Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) by Michael Freeden Page A

need to know why so many people think it reasonable to privilege their own society above other societies, and why it is that the emotional bond of belonging to a nation acts as a prism through which much political thinking is filtered. More generally, we need to decode the conscious and unconscious presuppositions that enable people to interpret their social worlds and to make factual, or erroneous, statements about those worlds. Only then can we go on to position ideologies at the heart of the political realm, as a form of thought-behaviour thatpenetrates all political practice. Only then can we ask what purposes ideology serves, and what additional purposes
specific
ideologies serve. And only then can we engage in functional explication.
Conceptual history: harnessing the past
    Another tradition of studying political thought has recently emerged under the banner of conceptual history. Conceptual history is a method of investigating the meanings of key political concepts over time, exploring both their accumulative senses and their discontinuities. It is predicated on the assumption that those concepts always reflect their historical contexts, the external events and practices within which ideas take shape. The leading conceptual historian, Reinhart Koselleck, has contended that modern political concepts display increasing abstraction and generality while becoming irreplaceable parts of the political vocabulary. There is now a common acceptance of ‘equality’ as a desirable key concept, though not of its various conceptions. Conceptual historians emphasize the diachronic (over time) emergence of meaning and its interweaving with synchronic (at a point in time) constructions. To illustrate: our synchronic, current notion of rights as individual claims is nourished by a diachronic evolution of individualism leading to a greater insistence on respect for persons, and by a desire to obtain protection from tyranny (rather than, say, inspired by feudal hierarchies of rights). In turn it redefines our understandings of past rights, so that we no longer tend to explain them as natural and hence discoverable, but as social and hence invented or evolving.
    Theories of conceptual history have borrowed insights from linguistics, and the end-result is the identification of a semantic field in which time and space both confer meaning on political language. That perspective differs sharply from the timeless universalization of concepts practised by some political philosophers and from the ahistoricity of many linguists, but itdraws heavily on the hermeneutic tradition which, like conceptual history, originated principally in Germany. Conceptual historians acknowledge the importance of social conflict involved in determining the ‘correct’ meaning of concepts. Political parties, groups, and interests ordinarily contest, or resist the contestation of, the basic concepts. To some, democracy may signal intensified popular participation and control, and to others the rhythmic accountability of political elites at election times. The public interest may conjure up clean air, a national health service, and the transparency of legislation, or it may be used to refer to defence, the governmental shielding of information, and the banning of strikes.
    Clearly, a strong affinity obtains between the contemporary study of ideologies and conceptual history. Variability, conflict, context, and the existence of fields of meaning are features held in common. Conceptual historians, obviously, concentrate on change over time. In particular, Koselleck has proposed the idea of shifting horizons of meaning. The meanings of concepts depend on the fusion of past and present horizons, or perspectives. For example, the persistent reference of 19th-century liberal ideologists to past Greek ideals of democracy infused 19th-century views with notions of the nobility of democracy and free speech. In parallel the 19th-century suspicion of the quality of rule that