Hegemony,Ideology and Contradictory Consciousness*

The critical phenomena for this paper are the variations in the degree of integration of ideas within mass publics. The theory of ideological hegemony provides a valuable sociological framework from which to study them. Current interpretations indicate that the political cultures of modern democracies consist of two major ideologies: a ruling ideology which is a coherent system of thought, and a subordinate ideology which exhibits contradictory consciousness. Evidence on the integration of ideas was obtained from a re-analysis of a survey of the British electorate.