Left–right political spectrum

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The left–right political spectrum is a system of classifying political positions,

moderate positions, which are not strongly aligned with either end of the spectrum. It originated during the French Revolution
based on the seating in the French National Assembly.

On this type of

authoritarian
).

History

Origins in the French Revolution

5 May 1789 opening of the Estates General of 1789 in Versailles

The terms "left" and "right" first appeared during the

Ancien Régime to the president's right and supporters of the revolution to his left.[6][7][8] One deputy, the Baron de Gauville, explained: "We began to recognize each other: those who were loyal to religion and the king took up positions to the right of the chair so as to avoid the shouts, oaths, and indecencies that enjoyed free rein in the opposing camp".[9][10]

Various "legislative assemblies" divided themselves during the Revolution, where members with "authoritarian, anti-democratic, or anti-socialist views" sat to the right of the chamber, and those with "liberal, democratic, or [other] egalitarian views" sat on the left.[11]

When the National Assembly was replaced in 1791 by a

centre-left, came to be used to describe the nuances of ideology of different sections of the assembly.[13]

The terms "left" and "right" were not used to refer to

reactionaries" who used red and white flags to identify their party affiliation.[14] With the establishment of the Third Republic in 1871, the terms were adopted by political parties: the Republican Left, the Centre Right and the Centre Left (1871) and the Extreme Left (1876) and Radical Left (1881). The beliefs of the group called the Radical Left were actually closer to the Centre Left than the beliefs of those called the Extreme Left.[15]

Beginning in the early twentieth century, the terms "left" and "right" came to be associated with specific political ideologies and were used to describe citizens' political beliefs, gradually replacing the terms "

Robert M. MacIver
noted in The Web of Government (1947):

The right is always the party sector associated with the interests of the upper or dominant classes, the left the sector expressive of the lower economic or social classes, and the centre that of the middle classes. Historically this criterion seems acceptable. The conservative right has defended entrenched prerogatives, privileges and powers; the left has attacked them. The right has been more favorable to the aristocratic position, to the hierarchy of birth or of wealth; the left has fought for the equalization of advantage or of opportunity, for the claims of the less advantaged. Defence and attack have met, under democratic conditions, not in the name of class but in the name of principle; but the opposing principles have broadly corresponded to the interests of the different classes.[19]

Ideological groupings

Generally, the left wing is characterized by an emphasis on "ideas such as

progress, reform and internationalism" while the right wing is characterized by an emphasis on "notions such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction and nationalism".[20]

Political scientists and other analysts usually regard the left as including

trade unionism, have also been associated with the left.[29]

Political scientists and other analysts usually regard the right as including

reactionaries.[39]

Various political ideologies, such as Christian democracy,[40] progressivism, some forms of liberalism, and radical centrism, can be classified as centrist.[41]

A number of significant political movements do not fit precisely into the left–right spectrum, including

civic nationalists,[46] as well as left-wing nationalists.[47] Populism is regarded as having both left-wing and right-wing manifestations in the form of left-wing populism and right-wing populism, respectively.[48] Green politics is often regarded as a movement of the left, although there are also green conservatives. Andrew Dobson suggests that green politics contains an inherent conservatism as it is "adverse to anything but the most timid engineering of the social and natural world by human beings". As such, the green movement is perhaps difficult to definitively categorize as left or right.[49][50]

The following are contemporary mainstream political ideologies according to their left–right position.

Political parties

Seating in the 2021 European Parliament
  The Left in the European Parliament – GUE/NGL (39)
  Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (145)
  Greens–European Free Alliance (71)
  Renew Europe (103)
  European People's Party Group (176)
  European Conservatives and Reformists (64)
  Identity and Democracy (65)
  Non-Inscrits (42)

Political scientists have made models in which the ideologies of political parties are mapped along a single left–right axis.[51] Klaus von Beyme categorized European parties into nine families, which described most parties. Beyme was able to arrange seven of them from left to right: communist, socialist, green, liberal, Christian democratic, conservative and right-wing extremist. The position of agrarian and regional/ethnic parties varied.[52] A study conducted in the late 1980s on two bases, positions on ownership of the means of production and positions on social issues, confirmed this arrangement.[53]

There has been a tendency for party ideologies to persist and values and views that were present at a party's founding have survived. However, they have also adapted for pragmatic reasons, making them appear more similar.[54] Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan observed that modern party systems are the product of social conflicts played out in the last few centuries.[55] They said that lines of cleavage had become "frozen".[56]

The first modern political parties were liberals, organized by the middle class in the 19th century to protect them against the aristocracy. They were major political parties in that century, but declined in the twentieth century as first the working class came to support socialist parties and economic and social change eroded their middle class base.[57] Conservative parties arose in opposition to liberals in order to defend aristocratic privilege, but in order to attract voters they became less doctrinaire than liberals. However, they were unsuccessful in most countries and generally have been able to achieve power only through cooperation with other parties.[58]

Socialist parties were organized in order to achieve political rights for workers and were originally allied with liberals. However, they broke with the liberals when they sought worker control of the means of production.[59] Christian democratic parties were organized by Catholics who saw liberalism as a threat to traditional values. Although established in the 19th century, they became a major political force following the Second World War.[60] Communist parties emerged following a division within socialism first on support of the First World War and then support of the Bolshevik Revolution.[61] Right-wing extremist parties are harder to define other than being more right-wing than other parties, but include fascists and some extreme conservative and nationalist parties.[62] Green parties were the most recent of the major party groups to develop. They have mostly rejected socialism and are very liberal on social issues.[63]

These categories can be applied to many parties outside of Europe.[64] Ware (1996) asserted that in the United States both major parties were liberal, even though there are left–right policy differences between them.[65]

Contemporary terminology

Worldwide

The left-right political spectrum can change over time in a process that affects the views on politicians from more than one country. In most countries, classical liberalism is thought of as a right-wing ideology, but when classical liberal ideas made their debut, they were thought of as leftist.[11]

Western Europe

In the 2001 book The Government and Politics of France, Andrew Knapp and Vincent Wright say that the main factor dividing the left and right wings in Western Europe is class. The left seeks

redistributive social and economic policies, while the right defends private property and capitalism. The nature of the conflict depends on existing social and political cleavages and on the level of economic development.[66]

Left-wing values include the belief in the power of

class hatred
. The right are skeptical about the capacity for radical reforms to achieve human well-being while maintaining workplace competition.

The right wing believes in the established church both in itself and as an instrument of social cohesion, and they believe in the need for strong political leadership to minimize social and political divisions. To the Left, this is seen as a selfish and reactionary opposition to social justice, a wish to impose doctrinaire religion on the population and a tendency to authoritarianism and repression.[67][68]

The differences between left and right have altered over time. The initial cleavage at the time of the French Revolution was between supporters of absolute monarchy (the Right) and those who wished to limit the king's authority (the Left). During the 19th century, the cleavage was between monarchists and republicans. Following the establishment of the Third Republic in 1871, the cleavage was between supporters of a strong executive on the right and supporters of the primacy of the legislature on the Left.[69]

United States

A 2005

Harris Poll of American adults showed that the terms left wing and right wing were less familiar to Americans than the terms liberal or conservative.[70] Peter Berkowitz writes that in the U.S., the term liberal "commonly denotes the left wing of the Democratic Party" and has become synonymous with the word progressive,[71] a fact that is usefully contextualized for non-Americans by Ware's observation that both mainstream political parties in the United States, generally speaking, are liberal in the classical sense of the word.[65]

democratic socialist and socialist movements, pacifist movements, and the New Left.[74]

Criticism

Political scientists have frequently argued that a single left–right axis is too simplistic and insufficient for describing the existing variation in political beliefs and include other axes to compensate for this problem.[75][76]

American

collectivism. Boaz asserts that arguments about the way these terms should be used often displace arguments about policy by raising emotional prejudice against a preconceived notion of what the terms mean.[77]

In 2006, British Prime Minister

globalisation while "closed" voters are culturally conservative, opposed to immigration and in favour of protectionism. The open–closed political spectrum has seen increased support following the rise of populist and centrist parties in the 2010s.[79][80]

Norberto Bobbio saw the polarization of the Italian Chamber of Deputies in the 1990s as evidence that the linear left–right axis remained valid. Bobbio thought that the argument that the spectrum had disappeared occurred when either the Left or Right were weak. The dominant side would claim that its ideology was the only possible one, while the weaker side would minimize its differences. He saw the Left and Right not in absolute terms, but as relative concepts that would vary over time. In his view, the left–right axis could be applied to any time period.[81]

A survey of Canadian legislative caucuses conducted between 1983 and 1994 by Bob Altemeyer showed an 82% correlation between party affiliation and score on a scale for right-wing authoritarianism when comparing right-wing and social democratic caucuses. There was a wide gap between the scores of the two groups, which was filled by liberal caucuses. His survey of American legislative caucuses showed scores by American Republicans and Democrats were similar to the Canadian Right and liberals, with a 44% correlation between party affiliation and score.[82]

While in many Western European democracies, traditionally the left is associated with socially liberal and economically left values, while the right is traditionally associated with socially conservative and economically right values, Eastern European, post-communist parties are frequently juxtaposed, with economically left parties holding nationalist positions more frequently and economically right parties being liberal and internationalist.[83]

See also

  • Big tent
  • Nolan chart
  • NOMINATE, a quantitative method for displaying the ideological orientation of legislators (such as members of the US Congress) on a two-dimensional map based on their roll-call voting, with one of the two dimensions corresponding to the left-right spectrum
  • Political spectrum
  • Sinistrisme

Notes

  1. eco-anarchism, anarcho-primitivism, and individualist anarchism.[21][22]

References

  1. doi:10.1111/j.0020-8833.2004.00293.x
    .
  2. ^ Knapp & Wright 2001, p. 10.
  3. ^ Garfinkle, Adam (1997). Telltale Hearts: The Origins and Impact of the Vietnam Antiwar Movement. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 303.
  4. Merriam-Webster Dictionary
    . 2011.
  5. ^ Broad, Roger (2001). Labour's European Dilemmas: From Bevin to Blair. Palgrave Macmillan. p. xxvi.
  6. ^ Bobbio 1996, pp. x, 33.
  7. ISBN 978-0-19-924414-0 – via Internet Archive. The quotation is an extract from a longer quotation translated on p. 110 of Voices of the French Revolution edited by Richard Cobb and Colin Jones accessible via the next citation.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link
    )
  8. ISBN 0-88162-338-5 – via Internet Archive
    .
  9. ISBN 978-0-226-50591-6 – via Google Books
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  10. ^ De Gauville, Louis-Henry-Charles (1864). Journal du Baron de Gauville, député de l'ordre de la noblesse, aux Etats-généraux depuis le 4 mars 1789 jusqu'au 1er juillet 1790. p. 20.
  11. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7394-7809-7 – via Internet Archive
    .
  12. ^ Gauchet 1997, pp. 245–247.
  13. ^ Gauchet 1997, pp. 247–249.
  14. ^ a b Gauchet 1997, p. 253.
  15. S2CID 191471833
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  16. ^ Gauchet 1997, pp. 255–259.
  17. ^ Gauchet 1997, p. 266.
  18. Mowat, Charles Loch
    (1955). Britain Between the Wars: 1918–1940. p. 577.
  19. ^ Lipset 1960, p. 222.
  20. ISBN 9781350314856 – via Google Books
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  21. ^ a b Brooks, Frank H. (1994). The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology of Liberty (1881–1908). Transaction Publishers. p. xi. Usually considered to be an extreme left-wing ideology, anarchism has always included a significant strain of radical individualism ...
  22. ^ Colin Moynihan (2007). "Book Fair Unites Anarchists. In Spirit, Anyway". New York Times. No. 16 April 2007.
  23. ^ March, Luke (2009). "Contemporary Far Left Parties in Europe: From Marxism to the Mainstream?" (PDF). IPG. 1: 126–143 – via Friedrich Ebert Foundation.
  24. ^ "Left". Encyclopædia Britannica. 15 April 2009. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  25. ^ See
    • Euclid Tsakalotis, "European Employment Policies: A New Social Democratic Model for Europe" in The Economics of the Third Way: Experiences from Around the World (eds. Philip Arestis & Malcolm C. Sawyer: Edward Elgar Publishing 2001), p. 26: "most left-wing approaches (social democratic, democratic socialist, and so on) to how the market economy works...").
    • "Introduction" in The Nordic Model of Social Democracy (eds. Nik Brandal, Øivind Bratberg & Dag Einar Thorsen: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013): "In Scandinavia, as in the rest of the world, 'social democracy' and 'democratic socialism' have often been used interchangeably to define the part of the left pursuing gradual reform through democratic means."
  26. ISBN 978-0-8108-3684-6
  27. ISBN 978-1-4039-6804-3
  28. ISBN 978-0195310184
  29. ^ See
    • Heikki Paloheimo, "Between Liberalism and Corporatism: The Effect of Trade Unions and Governments on Economic Performance in Eighteen OECD Countries" in Labour Relations and Economic Performance: Proceedings of a Conference Held By the International Economic Association in Venice, Italy (eds. Renator Brunetta & Carlo Dell'Aringa: International Economic Association/Palgrave Macmillan, 1990), p. 119: "It is easier for trade unions to have a mutual understanding with left-wing governments than with right-wing governments. In the same way, it is easier for left-wing governments to have mutual understanding with trade unions."
    • Thomas Poguntke, "Living in Separate Worlds? Left-wing Parties and Trade Unions in European Democracies" in Citizenship and Democracy in an Era of Crisis (eds. Thomas Poguntke et al.: Routledge: 2015), p. 173 ("So far we have argued that parties of the left are the natural allies of the trade union movement ... it goes almost without saying that this a simplification."), p. 181: "When it comes to overlapping memberships, left-wing parties have always been, by and large, strongly connected to the trade union movement.").
  30. ^ Arthur Aughey, Greta Jones & W.T.M. Riches, The Conservative Political Tradition in Britain and the United States (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press: 1992), pp. 150-53.
  31. ^ Justin Vaïsse, Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement (Belknap Press: 2010), pp. 111-12: "In 1995, however, a new age of neoconservatism was born, ... one that persists to this day ... Neoconservatism became a full-fledged element of the Republican party, now unambiguously on the right. The newcomers, such as William Kristol and Robert Kagan (the editors of the Weekly Standard), David Brooks, Gary Schmitt, Max Boot, and David Frum ... were men of the right, even if their stance on domestic policy was somewhat different from that of other conservatives."
  32. ^ George H. Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (Regnery Gateway: 2023), p. 368.
  33. ^ John S. Huntington, Far-Right Vanguard: The Radical Roots of Modern Conservatism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021).
  34. OCLC 750831024 – via Google Books
    . Libertarianism and conservatism are frequently classified together as right-wing political philosophies, which is understandable given the content and history of these views.
  35. ISBN 978-1-873176-57-3
    . The philosophy of 'anarcho-capitalism' dreamed up by the 'libertarian' New Right, has nothing to do with Anarchism as known by the Anarchist movement proper.
  36. ISBN 978-1-4443-1105-1
    . Whom to include under the rubric of the New Right remains puzzling. It is usually seen as an amalgam of traditional liberal conservatism, Austrian liberal economic theory Ludwing von Mises and Hayek), extreme libertarianism (anarcho-capitalism), and crude populism.
  37. ^ See
  38. ^ See
  39. ^ The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (Third ed.). 1999. p. 729.
  40. ISBN 978-1136159015
    .
  41. ^ Bobbio 1996.
  42. ^ André Munro, Christian democracy, Encyclopædia Britannica (2013), "Christian democracy does not fit squarely in the ideological categories of left and right. It rejects the individualist worldview that underlies both political liberalism and laissez-faire economics, and it recognizes the need for the state to intervene in the economy to support communities and defend human dignity. Yet Christian democracy, in opposition to socialism, defends private property and resists excessive intervention of the state in social life and education."
  43. ^ a b Siep Stuurman, "Citizenship and Cultural Difference in France and the Netherlands" in Lineages of European Citizenship: Rights, Belonging and Participation in Eleven Nation-States (eds. Richard Bellamy, Dario Castiglione & Emilio Santoro: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 178: "Regionalism and feminism, to take two major examples, were significantly different, but both cut across the old left-right cleavages, presenting a challenge to the traditional political cultures."
  44. ^ a b Jack Hayward, "Governing the New Europe" in Governing the New Europe (eds. Jack Ernest, Shalom Hayward & Edward Page: Duke University Press, 1995): "...the rebirth of a repressed civil society has led to a proliferation of social movements which cannot be subsumed under a left-right dichotomy. ... The emergency of a variety of new social movements, particularly green and feminist movements, as well as revived regionalist movements, has prompted the major parties to compete with one another in seeking to incorporate their demand."
  45. ^ Andrew C. Gould, "Conclusions: Regional, National, and Religious Challenges to European Identity" in Europe's Contending Identities: Supranationalism, Ethnoregionalism, Religion, and New Nationalism (eds. Andrew C. Gould & Anthony M. Messina: Cambridge University Press, 2014): "Regionalist parties in the center of the left-right spectrum generally favored integration. Regionalist parties on the extremes of left and right generally opposed integration, albeit for different reasons..."
  46. ^ See
    • David Miller, "Strangers in Our Midst", HUP, Harvard, Cambridge: MA, 2016
    • Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies Without Boundaries: on Telecommunications in a Global Age (ed. Eli M. Noam: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 124: "Nationalism is not a monopoly of either the right or the left. Rather, nationalism is the doctrine of the right-wing that most easily co-opts the left. Historically, liberals and radicals have been internationalists ... Liberal intellectuals have fought for the freedom of movement, freedom from censorship, and world cultural exchange, and have condemned ethnocentrism and prejudice. Right-wing nationalists, on the other hand, have glorified the unique heritage of their own ethnic group. The right has fought foreign influences that would undermine their historic religion, language, customs, or politics. But the description of the left as open and internationalist and the right as closed and nationalist is misleadingly simple. Nationalism has always been the most popularly appealing element in right-wing doctrine. As such it has been seduced and been adopted by the left." *
    • Anne Sa'adah, Contemporary France: A Democratic Education (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003): "The importance of nationalism as an opposition ideology is particularly clear in the record of the nineteenth century. For most of that century, nationalism was associated with the revolutionary rhetoric of popular sovereignty and used most effectively by the left, which was out of power. In the 1880s, however, after the creation of the Third Republic, nationalism became the preferred weapon the new regime's right-wing critics."
  47. JSTOR 48642382
    .
  48. ^ See
    • Javier Corrales & Michael Penfold, Dragon in the Tropics: Venezuela and the Legacy of Hugo Chávez (2d ed.: Brookings Institution Press, 2015), p. 150 (discussing difference and similarities between left- and right-wing populism).
    • Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, The End of the World as We Know it: Social Science for the Twenty-first Century (University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 95 (same).
  49. ^ See
    • Andrew Dobson, Green Political Thought (3d ed.: Routledge, 1995: 2000 printing), pp. 27-28; "If ... we take equality and hierarchy as characteristics held to be praiseworthy within left-wing and right-wing thought respectively, then ecologism is clearly left-wing, arguing as it does for forms of equality among human beings and between human beings and other species. However, to argue that ecologism is unequivocal left-wing is not so easy. For instance, green politics is in principle adverse to anything but the most timid engineering of the social and natural world by human beings."
    • ecosocialist
      ideas within the Green movement (most notably in Europe and Australia rather than in North America) has rendered the popular Green slogan "neither left nor right" somewhat problematic. While this slogan originally served to publicize the Green movement's efforts to find a distinct, third alternative to the growth consensus of capitalism and communism, it has since served to generate a lively and sometimes acrimonious debate within the Green movement concerning the proper political characterization of Green politics .... In particular, ecosocialists have mounted a challenge to the presumed left-right ideology neutrality of Green politics by pointing out the various egalitarian and redistribution (and hence 'leftist') measures that are needed to ensure an equitable transition toward a conserver society."
  50. ^ "The Return to "Green" Conservatism". Intercollegiate Studies Institute. 10 November 2020. Retrieved 22 May 2022.
  51. ^ Ware 1996, pp. 18–20.
  52. ^ Ware 1996, p. 22.
  53. ^ Ware 1996, pp. 27–29.
  54. ^ Ware 1996, p. 47.
  55. ^ Ware 1996, p. 186.
  56. ^ Ware 1996, p. 202.
  57. ^ Ware 1996, pp. 29–31.
  58. ^ Ware 1996, pp. 31–33.
  59. ^ Ware 1996, pp. 33–35.
  60. ^ Ware 1996, pp. 36–37.
  61. ^ Ware 1996, p. 34.
  62. ^ Ware 1996, pp. 41–42.
  63. ^ Ware 1996, p. 43.
  64. ^ Ware 1996, pp. 44–47.
  65. ^ a b Ware 1996, p. 60.
  66. ^ Knapp & Wright 2001, p. 7.
  67. ^ Knapp & Wright 2001, p. 9.
  68. ISBN 978-0-8047-2451-7
    . In many continental European countries, for example, 'conservatism' suggests the political influence of Catholicism. (p. 22) [...] American conservatism, in some of its major forms at least, has almost from its beginnings been aggressively pro-capitalist in ways that its European counterparts have not. [...] (However) the basic dilemmas now faced by conservative and socialist thought are everywhere similar. (p. 23) [...] Conservatism, it is often said, opposes rationalism. (p. 24)
  69. ^ Knapp & Wright 2001, pp. 2–5.
  70. ^ "Political Labels: Majorities of U.S. Adults Have a Sense of What Conservative, Liberal, Right Wing or Left Wing Means, But Many Do Not". The Harris Poll #12. 9 February 2005. Archived from the original on 9 February 2010.
  71. ^ Berkowitz, Peter (2007). "The Liberal Spirit in America and Its Paradoxes". In Jumonville, Neil; Mattson, Kevin (eds.). Liberalism for a New Century. University of California Press. p. 14.
  72. ^ Kazin 2011, p. xiv.
  73. ^ Kazin 2011, pp. xiii–xiv.
  74. ^ Kazin 2011, p. xix.
  75. OCLC 988218349
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  76. OCLC 1021804010
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  77. ISBN 978-1-933995-14-4
    .
  78. ^ Cowley, Jason (24 November 2016). "Tony Blair's unfinished business". New Statesman. Retrieved 8 May 2017.
  79. ^ "Drawbridges up". The Economist. 30 July 2016. Retrieved 8 May 2017.
  80. ^ "The Dutch election suggests a new kind of identity politics". The Economist. 18 March 2017. Retrieved 8 May 2017.
  81. ^ Bobbio, Norberto; Cameron, Allan (1996). Left and right: the significance of a political distinction. pp. vi–xiv.
  82. ^ Altemeyer, Bob (1996). The authoritarian specter. pp. 258–298.
  83. S2CID 154318189
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Bibliography

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