Local vs general ideologies: A normal ingredient of modern political life

Abstract

Although we no longer live in an era of strong ideologies, we currently observe a host of local ideologies: on all kinds of subjects people believe in false, fragile and sometimes socially and politically dangerous ideas. Should they, however, be considered as a normal ingredient of political life? How are they to be explained? False beliefs have always been an important topic in the human sciences. Three main types of classical theories can be identified on this subject. Herbert Simon is known for having created a ‘satisficing’ theory of decision, where he proposed to substitute ‘satisficing’ or, as we would rather say, satisfying, for optimizing. It is argued here that the local ideologies that permeate political life as well as the false and fragile beliefs that permeate ordinary life should be analyzed along the same lines. The theory explains the ‘biases’ discovered by cognitive psychologists, it solves the difficult problem of explaining magical beliefs; it explains the many strange collective beliefs that we currently observe in our societies; it explains ideological beliefs.