ideology

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)Doctrine, philosophy, body of beliefs or principles belonging to an individual or group.

   “A dictatorship bans things, that do not conform to its ideology, to secure its reign.”

   “This article examines how these three scholars use the term "Occitan" and ideologies of Occitanism to characterize southern France, and how such ideologies reflect the intellectual traditions in which they write.”

   “What is unbearable, in fact, is the feeling, 13 years after 9/11, that America has been chasing its tail; that, in some whack-a-mole horror show, the quashing of a jihadi enclave here only spurs the sprouting of another there; that the ideology of Al Qaeda is still reverberating through a blocked Arab world whose Sunni-Shia balance (insofar as that went) was upended by the American invasion of Iraq.”

   “Ideology constantly gets in the way. For the Government, unions are militant "Trots" out to cause political trouble. For the unions, the private sector is a grasping, evil leech. Neither is true.”

2. (uncountable)The study of the origin and nature of ideas.