Social order in formal democracies rests on tacit commonsense ideology more than formal law

Evidence

Consensus may be defined as the “lowest common denominator” in the values and beliefs which are widely shared among the population of a society. It provides the basis of continuity and fundamental agreement in common social life. “The consensus” is the structure of commonsense ideology and beliefs in the public at large. In formal democracies, a great deal of what holds the social order together consists of those tacit, shared agreements about fundamental issues embedded at the level of “commonsense ideology,” rather than what is formally written down in constitutional protocols and documents. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 873

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘the consensus’ as lowest-common-denominator commonsense ideology, distinguishing it from formal constitutional agreement.
• XREF: connects to: Formal logic and law serve the status quo once stripped of political content — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 225