Suchergebnisse

This week we ask: if the international community can't make states abide by their human rights obligations, what's the point of invoking human rights?

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

A psychological approach to the study of political ideology -- The end of the end of ideology -- Elective affinities : the intersection of "top-down" and "bottom-up" processes -- Political conservatism as motivated social cognition -- The secret lives of liberals and conservatives : dispositional and situational factors -- Authoritarian aggression, group-based dominance, and the liberal conundrum -- Ideological asymmetries and the essence of political psychology -- The promise and pitfalls of political neuroscience -- Epilogue: The values of a political psychologist.

As theoretical models of policy processes have become more ambitious, scholars have been relying more and more frequently on the policy positions of the relevant actors. Different methods are feasible in deriving these policy positions, but few have been applied to the Swiss parties. In this article, we offer estimates of policy positions for the Swiss political parties using various methods. Our main goal is to assess changes over time of these positions. On comparing the estimates obtained by the various methods, we offer insights on which estimates are preferable and in what contexts. Given the particular characteristics of the Swiss political system, namely a federal country with a non-parliamentary system of government, we also assess the degree to which the Swiss federal parties are unified.

AbstractIn this article the author proposes a schema conception of belief system structure, and employs confirmatory factor analysis, to investigate the connections between Left/Right Orientation and a range of policy-centred and operation-of-government attitudes. Contrary to the results of some earlier research, this study finds that Canadians' morality beliefs are moderately consistent with their evaluations of left and right. The examination includes education and class differences in the ideological integration and range of political belief systems. The major difference between workers and other classes is congruent with the notion that workers possess a dualistic political consciousness.

The paper deals with the ideological position of a newly formed business-firm party called ANO in the contemporary political environment of the Czech Republic. Although the advent of the party was truly rapid and ANO is a fairly unique formation, it is possible to employ some conventional analytical tools to reveal the party's ideological position. Firstly, I show that ANO is a vote-seeking party and it is therefore possible to analyse it in accordance with a Downsian spatial modelling. Next, I describe a roll call analysis method that is able to objectively identify the party's ideological position based on legislators' parliamentary votes. After I form several hypotheses, a data set consisting of 8,559 roll calls of 215 members of the Chamber of Deputies is depicted. Finally, the results show that ANO is located in the ideological centre, closer to social democrats rather than to right-wing parties. Besides this, ANO covers a smaller ideological space compared to traditional political parties. Finally, the results do not anticipate a potential split of ANO in the near future since the party's legislators have acted cohesively in the parliament so far.