Note On the Use of the Left-Right Dimension

Measuring Left-Right Political Orientation: The Choice of Response Format

“…Some scholars interpret respondents' inability to uniformly describe the substantive meaning of the left-right or liberal-conservative semantic as indicative of the dimension's weakness as a cognitive structure -at least for the unsophisticated part of the population (e.g., Converse 1964;Luttberg and Gant 1985;Jacoby 1986). Others call this conclusion into question and maintain the notion of a left-right dimension as organizing element of the shared political consciousness of individuals in a given society: Even if voters disagree on what 'left' exactly means, they agree to a large extent, for instance, on classifying a socialist party as leftist (Laponce 1970;Klingemann 1972;Van der Eijk 2001;Kroh 2003). Moreover, panel data show high within-person stability in people's own left-right positioning over time, which suggests that the left-right cognition is part of individuals' political identity (e.g., Sears and Funk 1999;Zuckerman et al 1998) and numerous studies demonstrate that people's left-right positioning uniformly affects all sorts of political attitudes and behaviors (e.g., Nie et al 1976;Van der Eijk and Franklin 1996).…”

Beyond Kriesiland: EU integration as a super issue after the Eurocrisis

“…). It organises the political consciousness in a society (Laponce ). What makes this heuristic so robust is its absorptive power.…”

“…Some researchers believe that it suffices to capture voter positions (Downs 1957;Inglehart & Klingemann 1976;Van der Eijk et al 2005). It organises the political consciousness in a society (Laponce 1970). What makes this heuristic so robust is its absorptive power.…”

Moving beyond the urban/rural cleavage: Measuring values and policy preferences across residential zones in Canada

“…Though there is debate about the consistency of citizens' ideologies, it is generally agreed that left-right ideology is an important organizing framework for the ways in which Canadians think about politics, and a robust literature has developed that aims to define left and right attitudes in public opinion. The earliest studies on the subject were fascinated by how the general public understood the terms left and right (Conover & Feldman, 1981;Laponce, 1970Laponce, , 1972Ogmundson, 1979), if the public could apply these terms correctly to political parties (Converse, 1964;Elkins, 1974;Lambert & Hunter, 1979), and how perceptions of left and right affect voting patterns (Kay, 1977;Weisberg & Rusk, 1970;Zipp, 1978). Noting the confusion of the public when it came to these terms, researchers began to explore the inability of citizens to understand the concepts of left and right and, subsequently, place themselves correctly on the then-standard 7-point scale (1 = very left, 7 = very right).…”