Hash and BaconKing: Left-right positions of political parties' manifestos

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Protectionism: Negative

In North America, maybe. Elsewhere... eh...

This system was designed by a group of German academics, fwiw

...

I don't have the words...

[Franknburger]

For the record, these are the specific topics that count for ideology:

Right
Military: Positive
Freedom and Human Rights
Constitutionalism: Positive
Political Authority
Free Market Economy
Economic Incentives
Protectionism: Negative
Economic Orthodoxy
Welfare State Limitation
National Way of Life: Positive
Traditional Morality: Positive
Law and Order
Civic Mindedness: Positive

Left
Anti-imperialism
Military: Negative
Peace
Internationalism: Positive
Democracy
Market Regulation
Economic Planning'
Protectionism: Positive
Controlled Economy
Nationalization
Welfare State Expansion
Education Expansion
Labour Groups: Positive



For a discussion and explanation of this breakdown, you can read this article

The article linked indicates that the system was designed by researchers from Oxford, building on German and US-American work, the authors of which, however saw many parts of the system quite critical. In any case, database development (but apparently not the rating system itself) has been co-funded by Deutsche Foschungsgesellschaft

As to the "counting topics" above, it is worth mentioning that the final score is calculated as difference of "right" and "left" statements, divided by the sum of all statements, whether left, right, or neutral.  This implies in particular that the score moves towards the centre when more "neutral" positions are included in a party's programme.

Germany 1990 is an excellent example for this effect: Out of 152 CDU statements analysed, 20 related to infrastructure, 8 to European integration (not clear whether this is neutral or 'left' internationalism), 20 to environmental protection (cleaning up the GDR mess?), 20 to specific demographic groups (including 6 to farmers), 3 to culture, 3 to Civic Mindedness, and 2 to political corruption (in the East?). In total 76 neutral out of 152 total issues = 50 %.

As to "left" statements, the 1990 CDU programme included:
- Peace 2, Military negative 2 (pretty sure that was in relation to the first Gulf War. In international comparison, you may call it "left", for Germany it was just standard).
- Internationalism 12 (most of which probably relates to the collapse of communism, so it wasn't that "left" as it otherwise may have looked)
- Democracy 2 (and I am pretty sure the sentences began with "Building" and continued with "in East Germany")
- Market regulation 6 (would need to look at it in detail to check whether that relates to transformation in East Germany, or specific regulatory proposals)
- Welfare State Expansion 17 (of course, the whole Western system was to be expanded into East Germany - unemployment protection, pensions, etc.)
- Equality 1 (between East and West?)
- Education Expansion 3
- Labour Groups: 2
So, essentially, a lot of the "left" positions relate to transforming the East German economy. Not the neoliberal way as, e.g., in the Baltics, but with social concern instead. Nevertheless, we are still talking here about a program on transforming a planned economy towards a market economy, and dealing with the collapse of communism, that is getting rated as being "left", while it was, even according to international standards, moderate at best.

Bottom-line: The right-left scale used is, say, a bit antiquated, especially when it comes to infrastructure, environment, civil liberties etc. It is also pretty surprising that "privatisation" does not qualify as "right" topic, or that "Education expansion" is being regarded as leftish.
Whether due to imperfections in the rating system, or sloppy coding, the system has obvious problems to deal with the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is becoming most apparent for Germany, but a leftwards trend is also visible for Ireland 1989 and Australia 1990 (and I guess, we will find more of it on further diagrams that are published for other, especially European countries).

[Kitteh]

The protectionism thing probably explains the 1920s in the US. By their methodology the isolationist and protectionist GOP of that time is "left wing" lol

[Kitteh]

Also, I thought of an interesting (if time consuming) thing you could do with this: take the ideology of each party, multiply it by the vote % that party got in that election, and average them all together. That'd give you the approximate position of what people voted for in that election.

[afleitch]

The UK, as it wasn't done before

[Foucaulf]

Just so I get this correctly, we can't actually use this in a meaningful way to compare the same party over time, right?

Actually you can. Sort of. Remember that these are ratings of the party's platform which weighs the positions taken by how much it talks about them. These numbers won't necessarily tell you how the views of a party or its voters have changed over time. It's more an ideological measure of a party's stated intentions and priorities- even if everything is ignored after the election

To provide a more concrete case of this, the data in graph form shows the intensity with which new party leaders stock their trenchlines (as the first 5-ish posts noticed).

Also, I thought of an interesting (if time consuming) thing you could do with this: take the ideology of each party, multiply it by the vote % that party got in that election, and average them all together. That'd give you the approximate position of what people voted for in that election.

Whoever does this should be careful with interpretation though, considering if parties are squeezing ideologically and stringing along an uninformed populace.

[Gustaf]

The UK one seems to capture most of the stuff I know fairly well. But I'm sure Al will find something to disagree with.

(for the record I mean the Tory move to the left during the 50s, the radicalization in the 70s, Thatcher's right-ward lurch in the 80s and then New Labour in the late 90s)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well any model that has the Liberals to the left of Labour at any point in the 1960s is one that is... er... seriously flawed. No one at the time would have thought that. Probably the model over-lefts most liberal parties in most places most of the time.

But the Labour graph reminds me of something that's important to remember: official party platforms are often a joke. Labour ran on a very left-wing one in February 1974, adopted in order to placate the newer and more radical elements in the Left that had become very strong in the constituency parties and in some affiliated unions (as the leadership expected to lose the election, keeping things calm internally made more sense than appealing to the voters who had deserted Labour in 1970). The PLP and the Shadow Cabinet was still dominated by the Right (even if the leader himself was not of that ilk), and surprise, surprise, the Labour government elected that year was not notably left-wing...

[Leftbehind]

Less than credible that Labour's 1992 manifesto was (more-or-less) equally as left-wing as 1945's.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Or to the left of 1987s. Or substantially to the left of 1997s, frankly.

[YL]

Remembering "Are you thinking what we're thinking", it seems odd to me that the Tories are shown as less right-wing in 2005 than for any other election in my lifetime.

[Gustaf]

Well any model that has the Liberals to the left of Labour at any point in the 1960s is one that is... er... seriously flawed. No one at the time would have thought that. Probably the model over-lefts most liberal parties in most places most of the time.

But the Labour graph reminds me of something that's important to remember: official party platforms are often a joke. Labour ran on a very left-wing one in February 1974, adopted in order to placate the newer and more radical elements in the Left that had become very strong in the constituency parties and in some affiliated unions (as the leadership expected to lose the election, keeping things calm internally made more sense than appealing to the voters who had deserted Labour in 1970). The PLP and the Shadow Cabinet was still dominated by the Right (even if the leader himself was not of that ilk), and surprise, surprise, the Labour government elected that year was not notably left-wing...

Ah, well. That's one election aberration that I didn't mind too much.

I am still not convinced you can use it meaningfully to compare over time, even though it was claimed earlier.