Ideology and insurrection: bringing the actor back in

Abstract

This article is the product of a research on ideas, ideologies and political change, with a special focus on El Salvador. it attempts to summarize some of my ideas on ideologies and political change in general -with a special attention to the so-called recolutionary ideologies- hoping that will have relevance to similar issues in other Latin American countries or to global trends. Two broad propositions are presented here:1) ideology i s a powerful "causer" of political change. it is neither the mirror of its immediate social and economic environment, nor a purely national product.2) Revolutionary ideologies play a fundamental role at all stages of so-called "revolutions" but even more so at the stage of emergence of insurrectionary forces, and especially in contemporary developing countries.