Expert judgements of the left‐right location of political parties: A comparative longitudinal study

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study the changing left‐right location of parties by means of expert judgments from 1982 and 1993. The analysis concentrates on 13 Western European countries, based on data from 1982 and 1993. According to the ‘experts’, there was a strong centrist tendency in the party systems of Western Europe from 1982 to 1993. This tendency was strongest for the socialist parties, but applies also to the non‐socialist parties, although to a lesser degree. On the other hand, the ‘New Politics’ parties became more firmly located on the extreme left and right, contributing to a new polarisation in the party systems. The analysis supports the notion that left‐right semantics have a substantial absorptive capacity in the sense that New‐Politics conflicts seem to be incorporated in these semantics.