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In research on 'mass killings' such as genocides and campaigns of state terror, the role of ideology is hotly debated. For some scholars, ideologies are crucial in providing the extremist goals and hatreds that motivate ideologically committed people to kill. But many other scholars are sceptical: contending that perpetrators of mass killing rarely seem ideologically committed, and that rational self-interest or powerful forms of social pressure are more important drivers of violence than ideology. In Ideology and Mass Killing, Jonathan Leader Maynard challenges both these prevailing views, advancing an alternative 'neo-ideological' perspective which systematically retheorises the key ideological foundations of large-scale violence against civilians. Integrating cutting-edge research from multiple disciplines, including political science, political psychology, history and sociology, Ideology and Mass Killing demonstrates that ideological justifications vitally shape such violence in ways that go beyond deep ideological commitment. Most disturbingly of all, the key ideological foundations of mass killings are found to lie, not in extraordinary political goals or hatreds, but in radicalised versions of those conventional, widely accepted ideas that underpin the politics of security in ordinary societies across the world. This study then substantiates this account by a detailed examination of four contrasting cases of mass killing - Stalinist Repression in the Soviet Union between 1930 and 1938, the Allied Bombing Campaign against Germany and Japan in World War II from 1940 to 1945, mass atrocities in the Guatemalan Civil War between 1978 and 1983, and the Rwandan Genocide in 1994. This represents the first volume to offer a dedicated, comparative theory of ideology's role in mass killing, while also developing a powerful new account of how ideology affects violence and politics more generally.

AbstractThe role of ideals and idealizations is among the most vigorously debated methodological questions in political theory. Yet, the debate seems at an impasse. This paper argues that this reflects a fundamental ambiguity over idealization's intended inferential logic: the precise way in which idealizations might yield normative knowledge. I identify two tacit understandings of idealization—a dominant "telic" understanding and a less overt "heuristic" understanding—which, though importantly different, are rarely distinguished. I argue that delineating these understandings, and shifting from telic to heuristic idealization, recasts various unresolved methodological problems for political theorists, while productively connecting their discussions to work on idealization in political science and the practice and philosophy of science more broadly. I then provide a systematic account of how idealization might be used heuristically in normative reasoning and explicate the advantages of such an approach for promoting rigorous, relevant, and inclusive methodologies in political theory.

A growing wave of scholarship suggests that ideology has demonstrable effects on various forms of armed conflict. But ideology remains a relative theoretical newcomer in conflict research, and scholars lack developed microfoundations for analyzing ideologies and their effects. Typically, existing research has primarily presented ideology as either an instrumental tool for conflict actors or a source of sincere political and normative commitments. But neither approach captures the diverse ways in which contemporary social science theorizes the causal connection between ideas and action, and both struggle to reconcile the apparently strong effects of ideology on conflict at the collective level with the relative rarity of 'true believers' at the individual level. This article addresses such problems by providing key microfoundations for conceptualizing ideologies, analyzing ideological change, and explaining ideologies' influence over conflict behavior. I emphasize that ideology overlaps with other drivers of conflict such as strategic interests and group identities, show how ideologies can affect conflict behavior through four distinct mechanisms – commitment, adoption, conformity, and instrumentalization – and clarify the role of both conflict pressures and pre-existing ideological conditions in ideological change. These microfoundational claims integrate existing empirical findings and offer a foundation for building deeper explanations and middle-range theories of ideology's role in armed conflict.

A growing wave of scholarship suggests that ideology has demonstrable effects on various forms of armed conflict. But ideology remains a relative theoretical newcomer in conflict research, and scholars lack developed microfoundations for analyzing ideologies and their effects. Typically, existing research has primarily presented ideology as either an instrumental tool for conflict actors or a source of sincere political and normative commitments. But neither approach captures the diverse ways in which contemporary social science theorizes the causal connection between ideas and action, and both struggle to reconcile the apparently strong effects of ideology on conflict at the collective level with the relative rarity of 'true believers' at the individual level. This article addresses such problems by providing key microfoundations for conceptualizing ideologies, analyzing ideological change, and explaining ideologies' influence over conflict behavior. I emphasize that ideology overlaps with other drivers of conflict such as strategic interests and group identities, show how ideologies can affect conflict behavior through four distinct mechanisms – commitment, adoption, conformity, and instrumentalization – and clarify the role of both conflict pressures and pre-existing ideological conditions in ideological change. These microfoundational claims integrate existing empirical findings and offer a foundation for building deeper explanations and middle-range theories of ideology's role in armed conflict.

Both scholars and international actors frequently stress the important role played by anti-civilian ideologies in escalating risks of mass atrocities against civilians. Yet strategies to combat and counter anti-civilian ideologies remain an uncertain and understudied component of atrocity prevention, and scepticism about their efficacy is to be expected. This paper provides a preliminary framework for thinking about strategies and interventions designed to counter the ideological causes of mass atrocities. First, I briefly clarify what existing research seems to suggest the role of ideology in mass atrocities is, and is not. I caution against cruder or overly strong theses about the role ideology plays, but clarify that whilst ideology's actual causal impact is varying and complex, it is also significant. Second, I clarify what ideological interventions and strategies might be reasonably expected to do, and comparatively assess them against more dominant existing prevention tools to show that their preventive potential is sufficiently high to warrant usage. Finally, I provide guidelines on how the effort to formulate ideological strategies and interventions for preventing mass atrocities should best proceed.

There is a widespread sense amongst theorists of genocide and other violent atrocities that ideology matters. But in spite of this agreement all is not well with actual efforts to theorise ideology's role. Theoretical and empirical coverage has been uneven, and there has been little if any effort to incorporate theories and research from the actual specialist field of contemporary ideology studies. As a result, overarching theoretical accounts of the role ideology plays in violent atrocities remain limited and problematic. This article aims to encourage theorists to think about ideology in a more systematic and productive fashion by analysing four questions: (a) what do we mean by ideology?; (b) who, in cases of atrocity, might be relevantly affected by ideology?; (c) how do these people come to be influenced by atrocity-justifying ideologies?; and (d) how might ideology encourage these people to commit, or permit, mass violence? In discussing these four questions, I aim to clear up a number of misconceptions or vagaries that frequent current analyses of ideology in works on atrocity and political violence. I ultimately offer a suggestive account of six recurring "justificatory mechanisms" which collectively describe some of the common features of ideology's role across cases of mass atrocity.

A slew of recent political theorists—many taking their cue from the political writings of Bernard Williams—have recently contended that political normativity is its own kind of normativity, distinct from moral normativity. In this article, we first attempt to clarify what this claim amounts to and then reconstruct and interrogate five major arguments for it. We contend that all these arguments are unconvincing and fail to establish a sense in which political normativity is genuinely separate from morality.

Dedicated research on ideology has proliferated over the last few decades. Many different disciplines and methodologies have sought to make a contribution, with the welcome consequence that specialist thinking about ideology is at a high-water mark of richness, diversity and theoretical sophistication. Yet this proliferation of research has fragmented the study of ideology by producing independent communities of scholars differentiated by geographical location and by disciplinary attachment. This review draws together research on ideology from several disciplines on different sides of the Atlantic, in order to address three questions that appear to be of great relevance to political scientists: (1) What do we mean by ideology? (2) How do we model ideology? (3) Why do people adopt the ideologies they do? In doing so, it argues that many important axes of debate cut across disciplinary and geographic boundaries, and points to a series of significant intellectual convergences that offer a framework for productive interdisciplinary engagement and integration.

Dedicated research on ideology has proliferated over the last few decades. Many different disciplines and methodologies have sought to make a contribution, with the welcome consequence that specialist thinking about ideology is at a high-water mark of richness, diversity and theoretical sophistication. Yet this proliferation of research has fragmented the study of ideology by producing independent communities of scholars differentiated by geographical location and by disciplinary attachment. This review draws together research on ideology from several disciplines on different sides of the Atlantic, in order to address three questions that appear to be of great relevance to political scientists: (1) What do we mean by ideology? (2) How do we model ideology? (3) Why do people adopt the ideologies they do? In doing so, it argues that many important axes of debate cut across disciplinary and geographic boundaries, and points to a series of significant intellectual convergences that offer a framework for productive interdisciplinary engagement and integration.

The Routledge Handbook of Ideology and International Relations reviews, consolidates, and advances the study of ideology in international politics. The volume unifies fragmented scholarship on ideology's impact on international relations into a wide-ranging and go-to volume. Declarations of the 'end of ideology' have once again been proven premature: nationalisms of various stripes are thriving; ideological polarization and conflicts both within and among states are growing; and environmentalist, feminist and anti-globalization activists are intensifying their demands on international institutions and states. This timely volume presents ideology as a way of explaining these major developments of world politics, rejecting the simplistic association of ideology with passionate convictions in favor of more complex theories of ideology's influence. The chapters summarize cutting edge knowledge on major topics, suggest key implications for broader theoretical debates and frameworks, and point the way forwards to future avenues of inquiry. Contributors adopt puzzle-orientated causal, constitutive and/or critical approaches with a central focus on the determinants and effects of ideological phenomena and their interaction with other aspects of politics. This handbook is of key interest to students and scholars of ideologies, international relations, foreign policy analysis, political science, political theory and more broadly to sociology, psychology, and history.

"The Routledge Handbook of Ideology and International Relations reviews, consolidates, and advances the study of ideology in international politics. The volume unifies fragmented scholarship on ideology's impact on international relations into a wide-ranging and go-to volume. Declarations of the 'end of ideology' have once again been proven premature: nationalisms of various stripes are thriving; ideological polarization and conflicts both within and among states are growing; and environmentalist, feminist and anti-globalization activists are intensifying their demands on international institutions and states. This timely volume presents ideology as a way of explaining these major developments of world politics, rejecting the simplistic association of ideology with passionate convictions in favor of more complex theories of ideology's influence. The chapters summarize cutting edge knowledge on major topics, suggest key implications for broader theoretical debates and frameworks, and point the way forwards to future avenues of inquiry. Contributors adopt puzzle-orientated causal, constitutive and/or critical approaches with a central focus on the determinants and effects of ideological phenomena and their interaction with other aspects of politics. This handbook is of key interest to students and scholars of ideologies, international relations, foreign policy analysis, political science, political theory and more broadly to sociology, psychology, and history. The Routledge Handbook of Ideology and International Relations is part of the mini-series Europe in the World Handbooks examining EU-regional relations"--

"The Routledge Handbook of Ideology and International Relations reviews, consolidates, and advances the study of ideology in international politics. The volume unifies fragmented scholarship on ideology's impact on international relations into a wide-ranging and go-to volume. Declarations of the 'end of ideology' have once again been proven premature: nationalisms of various stripes are thriving; ideological polarization and conflicts both within and among states are growing; and environmentalist, feminist and anti-globalization activists are intensifying their demands on international institutions and states. This timely volume presents ideology as a way of explaining these major developments of world politics, rejecting the simplistic association of ideology with passionate convictions in favor of more complex theories of ideology's influence. The chapters summarize cutting edge knowledge on major topics, suggest key implications for broader theoretical debates and frameworks, and point the way forwards to future avenues of inquiry. Contributors adopt puzzle-orientated causal, constitutive and/or critical approaches with a central focus on the determinants and effects of ideological phenomena and their interaction with other aspects of politics. This handbook is of key interest to students and scholars of ideologies, international relations, foreign policy analysis, political science, political theory and more broadly to sociology, psychology, and history. The Routledge Handbook of Ideology and International Relations is part of the mini-series Europe in the World Handbooks examining EU-regional relations"--