Hannah Arendt provides what could be called a narrow account of ideology: in it, ideology is mainly a feature of totalitarian or proto‑totalitarian regimes and as such opposed to politics as Arendt understands it. After a brief discussion of Arendt’s understanding of ideology and the benefits of such an understanding of the concept, I will introduce a concept of ideology that establishes ideologies to be a part of political life. Implicitly, this will highlight some aspects of political reality that are ignored by Arendt’s political theory. In the end, I will suggest how Arendt’s theory could be amended accordingly.

A full-length study is available here.