New Ideological Conflicts. Trends, Actors and New Networks

What is the point of discussing political ideologies today? And above all, what kind of ideologies are we dealing with today? What is the contemporary ideological landscape, and how can we study it? These are the questions posed by this special issue, which aims to address the sociological and political study of ideological phenomena in the contemporary global context—marked by new forms of global and local conflicts, as well as new forms of common sense. There are at least three reasons that justify a renewed interest in the sociological study of ideologies. The first has to do with the new geopolitical landscape. The second concerns the decline of the neoliberal refrain of the “end of ideologies.” The third is that today we are able to study political ideologies without subjecting them to value judgments but rather viewing them in close connection with their social context, thanks to the development of new epistemological and methodological perspectives introduced by the so-called morphological approach pioneered by Michael Freeden. This new field of studies allows us to identify key analytical elements upon which to build a new model for analyzing political ideas, through a comparative study centered on socio-political contexts.