The last two sections have looked at some of the most important ideas in politics. An ideology is a set of beliefs about these ideas and how they relate to politics in the real world. In almost every community, people with similar views on politics have grouped together as political parties to express their ideas and opinions. They do this through the formation of programmes consisting of a number of policies. Ideologies help them to organise their thoughts, suggest solutions and work together to address the issues that they face. Some of the basic questions that ideologies try to answer are:

• What are the most important values in our society?
• What is justice?
• What is more important: freedom, economic development, security, or equality?
• Is it more natural for people to cooperate or compete?
• Is change a good or a bad thing?
• What kind of role should government have in society?

An ideology has three parts:

1. An explanation of the current political situation
2. A set of beliefs about what politics should be like
3. A plan of actions that are necessary to make the current political situation reflect those beliefs. These take the form of policies, programmes and manifestos.

There are many ideologies, but this chapter will focus on three that some people say are the most basic ideologies. These are liberalism, conservatism, and socialism.