Civil Society and the Reconstruction of the Public Sphere: Ideologies between Theory and Politics

Ideology is a field of power politics involved in analysing the constant battle for interpretation, reinterpretation, ruling, and controlling public discourse. Far from 'the end of ideology', the study of ideology provides a critical tool in assessing the contemporary crisis of democratic legitimation and acts as a broker between the 'separate tables' of political science-comparative politics and political thought. This chapter analyses the transformations of the four ideological families in liberal democracies and their process of internal ideational refurbishing in view of the move from a dichotomous notion of the public sphere between the private and the public to a threefold reading of the relationship between politics, economics, and civil society. This analysis provides, in turn, a decisive tool in favour of the thesis of the realignment of political parties rather than the prevalent dealignment thesis.