In Search of Right and Left

In: Telos, Heft 103, S. 181-188

Abstract

Surveys various attempts to move beyond the categories of Left & Right in making distinctions in political orientations among social groups. It is argued that the work of such scholars as Giovanni Sartori (1982), Norberto Bobbio (1983), & Dino Confrancesco (1984) ends in essentializing these categories rather than creating viable alternatives. Moreover, to the extent that these categorizations function as ideal-types within theoretical constructs wholly devised by the authors, they do not correspond to empirical reality. These authors therefore risk losing themselves within the many varieties of Right & Left that they inevitably observe as they turn to empirical questions. A call is made to overcome rigid metapolitical frameworks devised in the nineteenth century that do not capture the political reality of the late twentieth century. D. M. Smith