Left-Authoritarians and Policy Representation in Western Europe: Electoral Choice across Ideological Dimensions

Lefkofridi, Zoe; Wagner, Markus; Willmann, Johanna

doi:10.1080/01402382.2013.818354

Cited by 172 publications

(130 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Thus, 'compared to other simple packages of views, left-authoritarian attitudes are consistently and strikingly unrepresented by any party'. 78 Similarly, Ellis and Stimson highlighted the prevalence of 'conflicted conservatives' in the United States, who are economically left wing but gravitate toward a conservative self-label on the basis of the latter's cultural connotations. 79 As Ahler and Brookman note, an ideologically mixed bag of attitudes might reflect a personally meaningful pattern of cultural and economic preferences that is not well captured by the rightleft dimension.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Cultural and Economic Conservatism Positively Correlated? A Large-Scale Cross-National Test

Malka¹,

Lelkes²,

Soto³

2017

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

175

226

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The right-left dimension is ubiquitous in politics, but prior perspectives provide conflicting accounts of whether cultural and economic attitudes are typically aligned on this dimension within mass publics around the world. Using survey data from ninety-nine nations, this study finds not only that right-left attitude organization is uncommon, but that it is more common for culturally and economically right-wing attitudes to correlate negatively with each other, an attitude structure reflecting a contrast between desires for cultural and economic protection vs. freedom. This article examines where, among whom and why protection-freedom attitude organization outweighs right-left attitude organization, and discusses the implications for the psychological bases of ideology, quality of democratic representation and the rise of extreme right politics in the West.Keywords: public opinion; political ideology; political attitude constraint; political psychology; comparative politicsThe right-left ideological dimension is a fundamental feature of politics in many nations around the world. 1 This article examines the relationship between two preference dimensions that are widely recognized as central to ideological differences between the right and left: the economic dimension, which concerns redistributive social welfare preferences and views about the proper scope of government economic involvement, and the cultural dimension, which concerns views on matters such as sexual morality and immigration. 2 Within mass publics around the world, do people who hold right-wing cultural attitudes also tend to adopt right-wing economic attitudes? Do left-wing cultural attitudes typically go with left-wing economic attitudes? The established view from political science is that there do not exist psychological constraints that would make this the case for most of the people most of the time. 3 In contrast, an influential research tradition within psychology specifies that cultural and economic conservatism have common psychological origins and thus typically co-occur. 4 Despite its theoretical importance and potential implications for quality of democratic representation, the typical association between cultural and economic attitudes within mass publics around the world has not been firmly empirically established.In this article we report what is to our knowledge the largest cross-national test to date of this empirical relationship, using World Values Survey (WVS) data from 229 national samples spanning ninety-nine nations. We furthermore examine how the alignment of these two dimensions varies across people and contexts. Our findings suggest that: (1) it is not typical for

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Cultural and Economic Conservatism Positively Correlated? A Large-Scale Cross-National Test

Malka¹,

Lelkes²,

Soto³

2017

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

175

226

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…In other words, the working class supports the left despite its culturally libertarian programme (see also Lefkofridi et al 2014). Clearly, it is voters' economic preferences -and not their cultural attitudes -that explain the differential support among classes for the centre-right.…”

Section: The Economic and Cultural Attitudes Linking Classes With Parmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral competition in Europe's new tripolar political space: Class voting for the left, centre‐right and radical right

Oesch

Rennwald

2018

European J Political Res

270

237

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The rise of the radical right fundamentally changes the face of electoral competition in Western Europe. Bipolar competition is becoming tripolar, as the two dominant party poles of the twentieth century – the left and the centre‐right – are challenged by a third pole of the radical right. Between 2000 and 2015, the radical right has secured more than 12 per cent of the vote in over ten Western European countries. This article shows how electoral competition between the three party poles plays out at the micro level of social classes. It presents a model of class voting that distinguishes between classes that are a party's preserve, classes that are contested strongholds of two parties and classes over which there is an open competition. Using seven rounds of the European Social Survey, it shows that sociocultural professionals form the party preserve of the left, and large employers and managers the preserve of the centre‐right. However, the radical right competes with the centre‐right for the votes of small business owners, and it challenges the left over its working‐class stronghold. These two contested strongholds attest to the co‐existence of old and new patterns of class voting. Old patterns are structured by an economic conflict: Production workers vote for the left and small business owners for the centre‐right based on their economic attitudes. In contrast, new patterns are linked to the rise of the radical right and structured by a cultural conflict.

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“…Winning PRR strategies may no longer be confined to the capitalist-authoritarian sector of the competitive space. Recent research suggests that significant sectors of the West European electorate cluster around positions combining left-wing economics with sociocultural authoritarianism, which have the potential to create a new successful location for the PRR ( Van der Brug and Van Spanje, 2009;Lefkofridi et al, 2014). Betz and Meret (2013) see right-wing populist parties such as the FN moving in that direction.…”

Section: The Prr and The Economymentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards the median economic crisis voter? The new leftist economic agenda of the Front National in France

Ivaldi

2015

Fr Polit

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International audienceThe Front National (FN) has made an impressive come back into France’s electoral politics since 2012. Adopting a supply-side approach, this article places the electoral rejuvenation of the FN in the context of the global crisis and looks at how the party has adapted programmatically to socio-economic demands emerging from this context. On the basis of manifesto data analysis, we find that despite having recently broadened its economic programme, the FN maintains a niche status in the party system. Our findings show, however, that the party has significantly shifted its economic platform, moving from a predominantly right-wing to a left-wing location since the mid-1980s. This move is characterized by an increase in egalitarian and nationalist economic policies, espousing also a populist framework. The reconfiguration of the FN suggests that the party may have moved to a pivotal position in recent years by converging around the economic preferences of the median voter. We discuss the role of internal and external factors in explaining the economic policy shift by the FN, and consider possible implications of our findings for understanding current populist radical right electoral dynamics in Europe

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Left-Authoritarians and Policy Representation in Western Europe: Electoral Choice across Ideological Dimensions

Cited by 172 publications

References 56 publications

Are Cultural and Economic Conservatism Positively Correlated? A Large-Scale Cross-National Test

Are Cultural and Economic Conservatism Positively Correlated? A Large-Scale Cross-National Test

Electoral competition in Europe's new tripolar political space: Class voting for the left, centre‐right and radical right

Towards the median economic crisis voter? The new leftist economic agenda of the Front National in France

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