Ideology and Values

Abstract

This chapter will step back from the’ story’ of Patten’s governorship, to examine some of the theoretical issues concerning ideology and values which it raised. Ideology has been defined as ‘essentially a set of beliefs which cannot and must not be questioned. It is buttressed by dogmas, and, indeed, depends on them for its existence and survival.’1 Political leaders strive to present a single coherent unified ideology capable of grouping together a range of potentially different individual positions in a single constituency or social base.2 This is essentially what was referred to in the Introduction to this book as a ‘discourse’, where discourse was defined as ‘a domain of language use which is underpinned by a set of common presuppositions’. Where a new political party is being formed, a leader needs to weld together a collection of previously disparate discourses in order to accommodate individuals from varying positions.3 Similarly, where a new leader who wants to bring about a change in the ideology of a party takes over, new discourses need to be brought together. The discourse analyst, Fairclough, describes the way Margaret Thatcher brought about a shift in British Conservative Party ideology, in the 1980s, to what he labels an ideology of ‘authoritarian populism’, as follows: ‘What is involved is essentially a matter of projecting onto the audience a configuration of assumptions, beliefs, and values which accord with the mix of political elements which constitutes what I referred to above as the ‘authoritarian populism’ of Thatcherite politics.’4