The real meaning of politics may seem difficult to unravel because of the difference in systems of government, applications and functions or attributes of the politicians in different countries.
A Canadian definition of politics would significantly vary from that of an American since the Canadian sees politics as natural and a growth in human behavior. On the other hand, the American will view it as the most important discipline that determines the success or failure of a state.
It therefore suffices to claim that people do not see politics from the same perspective. They have different political ideologies, which they embrace ranging from conservatism, liberalism and even fascism.
Therefore, in my own definition, politics is an art and science of ensuring freedom, liberty, adherence to constitution, fairness and justice, equality and adherence of human rights.
Political opinions like any other opinion from someone can strengthen or weaken democracy of a nation based on the nature of the opinion. However, when clearly researched with the chosen sample acting as a representative of the entire population and views of people, opinion polls will strengthen democracy.
Furthermore, free and fair opinion polls result to the achievement democracy as opposed to discriminative polls, which lean on one side thereby interfering with the expected democracy. Such cases will automatically weaken democracy leading to dictatorship.
Therefore, It becomes vital to have an idea of what others thinks and feel about certain political ideas or an issue before making up our mind in order to understand the issue in context in depth to avoid making unsubstantial remarks about the same. Failure to do so will cause mayhem in the political field influencing us negatively even leading to our fall and lose of authority and trust.
Individuals’ ideas and ideologies form the basis of politics. These ideologies differ from one politician to another and may be positive or negative to the society. Ideologies and idea in politics are important because they provide the leadership style of a politician.
They assist a politician in formulating his/her policies thereby ensuring the adaptation of the best leadership. Furthermore, these ideas ad ideologies help a person to identify the kind of political systems a politician seems agitated for, whether liberal, socialism, conservatism and many others.
Many societies form their ideologies from the influence of the political socialization of the day. Therefore, it has a number of roles it plays in supporting the societal ideologies. For instance, it helps in providing guidelines and support through enactments of important bills as per the interest of the society at the same time denying the introduction of changes that the society does not embrace.
As a result, there stands three questions that I would ask a politician, given the chance, concerning his/her political beliefs. The answers of the questions would assist me in determining their ideologies.
Do you believe in the opinions of the people as determinants of the leadership styles? Who forms the agenda of the national politics? What is your preferred or role model philosopher and which ideology did he or she uphold?
As long as every society or nation upholds or cherishes its own ideologies, the ideologies have their strengths and weaknesses. Some of the strengths of liberalism include the promotion of freedom, equality of liberty and transparency in the government system and leadership of a country.
They therefore ensure that democracy prevails, as people are free to raise their own opinions and views without limitation. On the other hand, the weakness of liberalism is that the free space and freedom available can amount to misuse hence leading to poor governance.
Conservatism too has its own strengths for instance the transfer of good values and tradition from one government to another hence promoting the well-being of a country. The weakness of conservatism is that, the traditions that a state upholds may become absolute due to changes in the current society leading to redundancy in success of a country.
Socialism on the other hand has its strengths and weaknesses. Its strength is that it ensures that the society is united working together towards ensuring that every person grows and develops uniformly. But is has a weakness in that it de-motivate capitalism as those people working hard will not be motivated to do so hence retarding the growth of economy.
Ideologies provide the guiding principles of how the country is governed. They stipulate the philosophy on which the people of that particular country oblige in their day-to-day existence. There stand some values and beliefs, which may compromise certain ideologies.
These include beliefs in traditions: belief that certain ideologies like socialism hinder the growth of a country economically. Technology, religious beliefs, and social status among others too constitute the various beliefs and values. Political philosophy and ideologies have certain differences.
Political philosophy simply refers to the values, beliefs that politicians liaise as their point of references in their political careers while ideologies are set or predetermined thoughts postulated by a given philosopher on how people ought to carry out political activities.
Ordinary ideas simply constitute the day-to-day thoughts or feelings of an individual pertaining to a certain subject while ideologies are thoughts of a person, adopted or not adopted by a given society as their point of reference in their lives.