Beyond the Left-Right Dimension: Policy Profiles and Programmatic Coherence of Party Groupings in the European Parliament

Abstract

Abstract This chapter is concerned, like Chapter 1, to see how far our manifesto-based policy estimates fit the new democracies—and new political developments—in Europe. However, it extends the inquiry from the Left-Right divisions we have been examining so far to all the issues covered by the coding frame. One of the most direct ways to see if these are relevant to contemporary politics is to use them to explain the evolution of party groupings in the European Parliament (EP). These have often been said to rest on strategic or pragmatic considerations (the arguments are reviewed in Volkens 2006). Our own feeling is that the groups— which in their present forms were formally constituted only recently (2004), after the enlargement of the EU to take in eight new CEE members—have a strong basis in the old party families and hence are grounded in their policies and ideologies rather than in situational and strategic influences.