ABSTRACT
In political life important decision-makers and ordinary citizens bring a set of beliefs and values, more or less integrated, to the political situations in which they must decide to act or decide to remain passive. The image one has of the political environment, whether it is a carefully constructed interpretation or a casually developed outlook, influences the politically relevant decisions the agent makes. The ideology one implicitly or explicitly accepts conditions much of his activity. If one's ideology portrays a large gap between the existing situation and one's vision of the possible and desirable, the resulting discontent is likely to issue in agitation to close that gap. It is one thing to claim that political scientists have a clear social responsibility to construct and examine ideologies, another to decide how ideologies can be formulated, presented, and criticized in responsible ways.
