Left-wing And Right-wing Research Articles

Drivers of political parties’ climate policy preferences: lessons from Denmark and Ireland

ABSTRACT Political parties are important actors in domestic climate politics. What drives variation in parties’ climate policy preferences? To contribute to a growing literature on the party politics of climate change, we focus on the roles of public opinion, party competition, and parties’ traditional policy preferences in shaping parties’ climate policy preferences in Denmark and Ireland. In case studies that draw on in-depth interviews with policy practitioners, we show how parties respond to public opinion, accommodate issue-owners, and are powerfully constrained and enabled by their existing preferences. These mechanisms also help to explain different responses on climate policy across the left-right spectrum. Competition between mainstream parties is particularly powerful, but can constrain as much as it enables ‘greener’ climate policy preferences. While climate change may be a distinctive problem, the party politics of climate change features similar incentives and constraints as other domains.

Beyond the Left-Right Spectrum: A Typological Analysis of Ideologues in China’s Weibo Space

ABSTRACTThis study aims to investigate Weibo users’ political ideologies in China. It argues that a left-right spectrum cannot adequately depict the ideological landscape, and proposes a typological framework to guide the analysis of competing ideologies. Based on a sample of 3440 Weibo users, this article uses latent class model to identify sub-types of ideologues. It discerns five ideological groups, namely Maoists, regime defenders, full-fledged liberals, economic liberals, and political liberals, as well as one politically silent group. The results show that liberal leaning Weibo users are not a homogeneous group, and should not be holistically conceived as regime challengers in opposition to regime defenders. To a certain degree, economic liberals are more similar to regime defenders than Maoists, and this can be better understood from a typological perspective than a spectrum perspective. This article concludes with a discussion on the political implications of the findings.

Analysis of political orientation and left-right party labelling in the European Parliament

This article explores the political parties in the 8th European Parliament on the basis of roll-call vote analysis. Besides the left-right divisions, we have also analysed the nationalist-globalist political cleavage. We have compared the resulting party positions with their left-right wing party labels. In addition, we have focused on inconsistencies and biased existing labels and the geopolitical interests connected with the current way of labelling. We have found out that the current way of left-right labelling privileges a globalist and liberal position, while some other political positions were not even represented. Finally, we have presented a new way of political labelling, which would also include a nationalist-globalist cleavage.

The Centrist Paradox: Political Correlates of the Democratic Disconnect

A wave of new research has documented the decline in citizen support for democracy. But the distribution of anti-democratic attitudes remains unclear. In this article, I use the World Values Survey and European Values Survey to examine the relationship between democratic discontent and the left-right political spectrum. I find that, contrary to much contemporary commentary, hostility to democracy is strongest not at the political extremes, but in the center. Respondents at the center of the political spectrum are the least supportive of democracy, least committed to its institutions, and most supportive of authoritarianism. I refer to this surprising finding as the ‘centrist paradox.’ Recent research has advanced our understanding of extremist parties. We know far less, however, about moderates. The centrist paradox points to this lacuna.

The symbolic mosaic: an empirical typology of national symbolic webs and its effect on vote choice in Canada

ABSTRACTDiversity is at the core of any definition of Canada. But can different types of relationships among national symbols co-exist within the same national unit? And do these various symbolic assemblages have different effects on citizens’ attitudes and behaviour? This paper uses survey data to uncover patterns in Canadians’ attitudes towards 18 national symbols. The results indicate the existence of four distinct national symbolic ‘webs’. The first two types are defined by conventional sociodemographic cleavage, while the difference between the two others is defined by the left-right ideological spectrum. In addition, further analysis shows that membership in these web-types is predictive of vote choice.

Political cleavages, party voter linkages and the impact of voters’ socio-economic status on vote-choice in Iceland, 1983-2016/17

In the research presented in this paper, we analyse whether the structure of the political cleavage system in Iceland has changed since 1983, as well as whether the impacts of party-voter linkages and the social structure of the vote have changed between 1983 and 2016/2017. Based on official data and the Icelandic National Election Study (ICENES), we find that the rural-urban cleavage and left-right cleavage, which are reflected in party polarisation on the left-right spectrum, are as important today as previously. Our main results regarding the impacts of party-voter linkages and the social-structure of the vote is that the core bonds of party identification, left-right distances and the social structure of the vote have weakened over time, whereas the impact of party sympathy has become stronger. This, we argue, reflects that while there has been a gradual change in the impact of party-voter linkages and the social structure of the vote, opening up a space for new parties to succeed, the political cleavage system has remained intact. The major change has thus occurred in the bond between voters and parties and not in the structure of party competition in Iceland.

“Righting” Conventional Wisdom: Women and Right Parties in Established Democracies

Parties are the key actors shaping women's representation in advanced parliamentary democracies. Based on traditional patterns of feminist organizing, conventional wisdom suggests that parties of the left are the strongest advocates for women. Despite the prevalence of this claim, a burgeoning body of work indicates that parties on the right can—and often do—seek to represent women. To address these competing narratives, this article offers the first large-N, party-level study of women's descriptive and substantive representation over place and time. The results suggest that party ideology continues to affect women's representation: right parties lag behind their left counterparts with respect to women's presence in elected office, and right and left parties address women differently on their platforms. At the same time, there is significant heterogeneity among right parties. Christian democrats, for example, are more likely than conservatives to adopt voluntary gender quotas and make policy claims on behalf of women. The traditional left-right distinction is thus too coarse to fully explain party behavior in these states.

Un análisis de política comparada: planes de gobierno y posicionamiento de partidos políticos. El caso de Alemania, España, EE.UU., Francia, México, R.U. y Suecia. 1980-2015

Este documento presenta un análisis de política comparada dividido en dos secciones: La primera contiene un análisis de las políticas propuestas en los Planes Electorales de siete economías para el período 1980-2015; la segunda presenta el estudio del posicionamiento en el espectro izquierda-derecha de los Partidos Políticos a través del indicador RILE. Ambos objetivos se desarrollan bajo la metodología del Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP), con la cual se genera una matriz de información de política pública. Los resultados muestran que a pesar de que en estos 35 años de estudio ha imperado el modelo neoliberal para el conjunto de economías, estas no priorizan en el mismo orden las áreas identificadas por el CMP como dominios de actuación gubernamental. En cuanto al posicionamiento de los partidos políticos, se concluye que impera el sistema bipartidista en las 7 economías, y que, aunque estos se auto-posicionan de acuerdo a su ideología en el espectro izquierda-derecha, durante el período de estudio se observa como ambos tipos de partidos navegan de un lado al otro.

The financial crisis and the European Parliament: An analysis of the Two-Pack legislation.

The left–right line of conflict has been the dominant dimension of decision-making in the European Parliament since 1979. A pro-/anti-European Union integration dimension is of secondary importance. Limited evidence exists on the conditions under which these different dimensions matter. This study examines parliamentary decision-making about the so-called Two-Pack, which moved responsibilities about budgetary decision-making to the European Commission. The article uses in-depth interviews, textual analysis of committee debates and roll call voting analysis in order to determine which lines of conflict matter at which stage of decision-making. The evidence indicates that left–right division is dominant in the informal stage preceding committee debates, while both the pro-/anti-European Union and the left/right dimensions matter during the committee stage, whereas for plenary votes, the pro-/anti-European Union dimension is crucial.

Podział lewica–prawica w perspektywie konstruktywistycznej

The case of Poland perfectly illustrates the scale of discrepancies between researchers who, on the one hand, criticize the specific nature of the Polish version of the left-right split, but on the other emphasize its important role in the process of identifying political and social actors and the ability of dichotomy to organize political life. Political actors define themselves in a specific way, allowing voters to recognize these acts of self-positioning and rely on them to make electoral decisions. The purpose of this paper is to problematize these divergences in two ways. First, by showing that the origin of this ‘problem’ lies in the assumptions underlying the theory of rational choice. It is claimed that it is the positivist ontology and epistemology underlying the paradigm of rational choice that produced ‘the problem’, which – from the perspective of interpretative approaches – constitutes an inherent part of political life. Secondly, by applying the assumptions of constructivism to the study of the left-right division in order to investigate the role of dichotomy in the political communication processes and construction of political order.

Engendering Bilateralism: An Exploration of Possible Sources of Non-Centrism in Government Formation

This paper seeks to identify factors that may lie behind the tendency for parliamentary governments to form primarily from one side of the left-right spectrum and to adopt non-centrist policy positions. Because of measurement limitations as well as the inherent complexity of the processes involved, this exploration is undertaken through simulation experiments. The new software created for these experiments allows the potential impact of a wide variety of factors, including voter and party motivations and distributions, policy space dimensionality, and constraints on government formation, to be assessed. Although the results cannot tell us what fosters non-centrism in the real world, they do reveal some factors that appear to be conducive to that end and thus serve as a guide to further research on this neglected topic.

A TEXTBOOK FOR THE LEFT? PROVIDING A FRAMEWORK FOR LEFT-WING EDUCATION POLICIES IN LATIN AMERICA

The article presents a framework by which the approaches taken in educational policies by the Left in Latin America may be understood. This framework takes the form of a continuum by which left-wing or progressive education, between deep and shallow poles, drawing at an abstract level the continuum on the equalitydifference
 features associated with Bobbio’s (1996) Left-Right political spectrum.
 Presenting the Cuban (and to a lesser extent) the Sandinista Revolutions as the main source of progressive education in the region prior to the 1980s, the article
 examines the neo-liberal and neo-conservative features associated with the New Right and the Left’s response. This took several forms in the 1990s and 2000s: traditional communists (Cuba), Third Way reformers (e.g. the PSDB in Brazil and the Concertacion in Chile) and between first generation (e.g. PT, Frente Amplio, Izquierda Unida, Causa R, Sandinistas since 2007) and second generation (e.g. the Chavez, Morales and Correa governments) radicals. The educational approaches of
 each are then placed tentatively along the progressive education spectrum.

Examining the Alternative Media Ecosystem Through the Production of Alternative Narratives of Mass Shooting Events on Twitter

This research explores the alternative media ecosystem through a Twitter lens. Over a ten-month period, we collected tweets related to alternative narratives — for example, conspiracy theories — of mass shooting events. We utilized tweeted URLs to generate a domain network, connecting domains shared by the same user, then conducted qualitative analysis to understand the nature of different domains and how they connect to each other. Our findings demonstrate how alternative news sites propagate and shape alternative narratives, while mainstream media deny them. We explain how political leanings of alternative news sites do not align well with a U.S. left-right spectrum, but instead feature an anti-globalist (versus globalist) orientation where U.S. Alt-Right sites look similar to U.S. Alt-Left sites. Our findings describe a subsection of the emerging alternative media ecosystem and provide insight in how websites that promote conspiracy theories and pseudo-science may function to conduct underlying political agendas.

Two Trackers Are Better than One: Information about the Co-actor's Actions and Performance Scores Contribute to the Collective Benefit in a Joint Visuospatial Task.

When humans collaborate, they often distribute task demands in order to reach a higher performance compared to performing the same task alone (i.e., a collective benefit). Here, we tested to what extent receiving information about the actions of a co-actor, performance scores, or receiving both types of information impacts the collective benefit in a collaborative multiple object tracking task. In a between-subject design, pairs of individuals jointly tracked a subset of target objects among several moving distractor objects on a computer screen for a 100 trials. At the end of a trial, pairs received performance scores (Experiment 1), information about their partner's target selections (Experiment 2), or both types of information (Experiment 3). In all experiments, the performance of the pair exceeded the individual performances and the simulated performance of two independent individuals combined. Initially, when receiving both types of information (Experiment 3), pairs achieved the highest performance and divided task demands most efficiently compared to the other two experiments. Over time, performances and the ability to divide task demands for pairs receiving a single type of information converged with those receiving both, suggesting that pairs' coordination strategies become equally effective over time across experiments. However, pairs' performances never reached a theoretical limit of performance in all experiments. For distributing task demands, members of a pair predominantly used a left-right division of labor strategy (i.e., the leftmost targets were tracked by one co-actor while the rightmost targets were tracked by the other co-actor). Overall, findings of the present study suggest that receiving information about actions of a co-actor, performance scores, or receiving both enables pairs to devise effective division of labor strategies in a collaborative visuospatial task. However, when pairs had both types of information available, the formation of division of labor strategies was facilitated, indicating that pairs benefited the most from having both types of information available (i.e., actions about the co-actor and performance scores). Findings are applicable to circumstances in which humans need to perform collaborative visuospatial tasks that are time-critical and/or only allow a very limited exchange of information between co-actors.

Bioethics and Populism: How Should Our Field Respond?

Across the world, an authoritarian and exclusionary form of populism is gaining political traction. Historically, some populist movements have been democratic and based on a sense of inclusive justice and the common good. But the populism on the rise at present speaks and acts otherwise. It is challenging constitutional democracies. The polarization seen in authoritarian populism goes beyond the familiar left-right political spectrum and generates disturbing forms of extremism, including the so-called alternative right in the United States and similar ethnic and nationalistic political movements in other countries. The field of bioethics will be profoundly affected if authoritarian populism displaces constitutional democracy. But the field has a significant contribution to make to rebuilding the communal and civic foundations upon which constitutional democracy rests.

Media and Protests: The Utilisation of Communication Technologies by Environmental Movements

A notable feature of the recent political landscape has been the increasing incidents of confrontation between grassroots and elites. These conflicts have occurred in the wake of the declining relevance of the traditional left-right dichotomy, and have been exemplified by the campaigns of opposition led by environmental groups against the globalised corporate sector. This article will examine how new forms of political expression may arise from the environmental movements’ utilisation of the new technologies of communication as a strategic tool in their campaigns of protest. The use of internet and media technologies by environmental groups has facilitated the growth of a network of committed activists, who provide scientific and technological expertise to like-minded protests around the globe. By exploring movement use of media and internet technologies, this paper will outline new approaches taken by grassroots groups as part of their resistance to corporate and institutional actors. The spread of environmental protest in Ireland through the increased use of communications technologies will be examined in regard to the Galway for a Safe Environment (GSE) anti-incinerator group. GSE’s ability to utilise internet technologies to forge links with global anti-toxics movements will provide evidence of the extensive nature of the links available to grassroots groups who embrace cyberprotest as a tool of protest.

Liberal party performance when rival parties shift position on the left-right axis

Building from the work of Nagel and Wlezien (2010) in the United Kingdom, I theorize that liberal parties gain votes from conservative parties across 26 established democracies when conservative parties move to the right, and from social democratic parties when those parties move to the left, as judged by the right-left scale provided by the Comparative Manifesto Project. I also hypothesize that liberal strength at election (t−1) pushes conservative and social democratic parties farther towards the extremes of the left-right spectrum. The models tested herein demonstrate that this in fact does happen cross-nationally, although the effect is considerably weaker than the relationship Nagel and Wlezien identified in the United Kingdom.

The Language of Romanian Politics: Reifying the Other

Abstract The dominant ideology of a society seems to possess the means to infiltrate an individual’s conscience with relative ease. From the perspective of the functions of language, we intend to investigate those fundamental characteristics of the ideological discourse that reify the left-right dichotomy in Romanian politics.

From National to Sub-National? Exploring the Territorial Dimension of Social Assistance in Italy

AbstractIn countries that have experienced decentralisation processes, the role that central and sub-national authorities play in the governance of some social policies may vary considerably across regions. In Italy, for instance, whereas some regions (and municipalities) have been very active in financing social assistance programmes, others still overwhelmingly rely on resources directly allocated by the central government. This indicates that, in a ‘regionalised’ system, the development of a sub-national social dimension is not a territorially homogeneous phenomenon. Interestingly, cross-regional variation is mainly explained by differences in the strength of regionalist parties. The share of total social assistance spending allocated by sub-national authorities has increased significantly in those areas of the country where regionalist parties are stronger and does not seem to depend on ideological shifts on the left-right spectrum. Surprisingly, the positive effect of regional economic development on sub-national spending is not as strong as expected. On the other hand, female employment and population ageing seem to explain part of territorial divergence, the former having a positive effect and the latter a negative one on the dependent variable.

The lasting impact of adolescence on left-right identification: Cohort replacement and intracohort change in associations with issue attitudes

This study examined how the ideological correlates of left-right identification in the Netherlands changed between 1980 and 2008, and whether these changes were driven by cohort replacement. Analyses on repeated cross-sectional data revealed an increasing association with immigration and a decreasing association with redistribution, secularism, and civil liberties. Cohort differences were found for cultural attitudes: Secularism was most important for voters who were adolescent between 1917 and 1960, while civil liberties were most important for the 1960–1980 cohort and immigration was relatively important for the 1980–2008 cohort. Consequently, over-time changes in the importance of cultural issues, but not redistribution, were partly driven by cohort replacement. This indicates that the left-right distinction is partly shaped by circumstances during voters' adolescent years.