Abstract

In day-to-day politics as well as in the field of political science we make frequent use of such terms as Liberal, Social Democrat and Conservative, thus implicitly assuming that we can derive the political positions of a party simply by looking at the party family it belongs to. These labels grew out of a series of political processes in the eighteenth century, and it is therefore questionable whether they have retained their relevance in a time where voter dealignment is commonplace, parties tend to be less ideological and less attached to certain classes or societal groups, and new issues have come to the forefront of political debate. Using a new dataset compiled during the 2009 European Parliament election, it is studied whether the parties belonging to the same party families still have roughly similar ideological attitudes, or party families today are too fragmented politically to constitute a useful analytical concept. The study finds that party families generally speaking are characterized by a relatively high degree of internal cohesion. However, on certain questions many party families do not exhibit a high degree of coherence, indicating that the degree of coherence has decreased with the advent of new political issues. Also, the liberal party family exhibits very low degrees of coherence, and it is questionable whether the liberal parties in fact have enough in common to justify categorizing them under the same ideological heading.

Highlights

  • Politisk konkurrence i moderne demokratier foregår som partipolitik

  • For eksempel har emnerne europæisk integration og indvandring fået stor betydning i de fleste europæiske partisystemer, men de problemstillinger der oprindeligt var definerende for partifamilierne giver ikke svar på, hvordan partierne skal forholde sig til sådanne nye emner

  • Mair og Mudde (1998) finder, at der i litteraturen er fire overordnede tilgange til det at inddele partier i partifamilier, henholdsvis oprindelse, transnationale forbindelser mellem partier, partiers politik og ideologi, og partiers navne

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Summary

Europæiske partiers partifamilier og politiske ideologi

Normalt anskuer vi europæisk politik i forhold til bestemte partifamilier, liberale, socialdemokrater og så videre. Har partierne fra samme partifamilie tilpasset sig de nye forhold og nye politiske emner på samme måde, eller er der opstået så store politiske forskelle indenfor hver partifamilie at begrebet har mistet analytisk relevans?. For eksempel har emnerne europæisk integration og indvandring fået stor betydning i de fleste europæiske partisystemer, men de problemstillinger der oprindeligt var definerende for partifamilierne giver ikke svar på, hvordan partierne skal forholde sig til sådanne nye emner. Eftersom der er sket så store forandringer i det politiske landskab siden partifamilierne blev dannet er det ikke givet, at de stadig indfanger de væsentligste forskelle og lighedspunkter mellem partier. Mens mange studier anvender partifamilien som typologisk begreb er der mindre opmærksomhed i litteraturen omkring, hvor dækkende partifamilierne som begrebsdannelse reelt er i lyset af de markante forandringer europæisk partipolitik har undergået det sidste halve

TIDSSKRIFTET POLITIK
Partifamilierne i Vesteuropa
MALTHE MUNKØE
Optøningen af partisystemerne
Den nationalkonservative partifamilie
Operationalisering af partifamilie
Afdækning af politiske emner
Kriminalitet EU
Den venstreorienterede partifamilie
Diskussion af resultaterne
Full Text
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