The homogeneity of West European party families

Abstract

Common concepts for the classification of parties into families (origins, transnational links, ideology, name) suggest that the radical right should be less homogeneous than most other party families in Western Europe: their comparatively diverse origins, disputed ideological core features, as well as the lack of stable transnational cooperation and the absence of an agreed-upon label support this reasoning. The article uses expert survey data on six policy dimensions to assess the homogeneity of the radical right in comparison with the green, social democratic, liberal and conservative/Christian democratic party families. Analysing a set of 94 parties from 17 West European countries it is found (1) that party families on the left are more homogeneous than those on the right, and (2) that the party family of the radical right exhibits a degree of policy homogeneity similar to the conservatives and Christian democrats, while being considerably more homogeneous than the liberal party family.