Conceptualizing Left and Right in comparative politics: Towards a deductive approach. Jahn, D. Party Politics, 17(6):745–765, November, 2011. Publisher: SAGE Publications LtdPaper doi abstract bibtex Despite the importance of the Left-Right dimension in comparative politics, establishing an index that captures this dimension in both a theoretically and empirically sound manner remains an ongoing challenge for political scientists. Having reviewed existing attempts to construct measures for the Left-Right dimension, and having concluded that they are merely inductive and problematic from a methodological perspective, this article proposes a deductive approach based on Norberto Bobbio’s theory of Left and Right and suggests a combination with statistically robust measures drawn from the data provided by the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP). The fundamental features of the proposed index are: first, Left and Right are theoretical concepts which should be accounted for in the empirical analysis. Second, the Left-Right dimension is time- and country-specific. Third, different statements have different meanings on a Left-Right scale. Fourth, the importance of the Left-Right dimension itself varies over time and across countries. Finally, the data have to be analysed adequately.
@article{jahn_conceptualizing_2011,
title = {Conceptualizing {Left} and {Right} in comparative politics: {Towards} a deductive approach},
volume = {17},
issn = {1354-0688},
shorttitle = {Conceptualizing {Left} and {Right} in comparative politics},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1177/1354068810380091},
doi = {10.1177/1354068810380091},
abstract = {Despite the importance of the Left-Right dimension in comparative politics, establishing an index that captures this dimension in both a theoretically and empirically sound manner remains an ongoing challenge for political scientists. Having reviewed existing attempts to construct measures for the Left-Right dimension, and having concluded that they are merely inductive and problematic from a methodological perspective, this article proposes a deductive approach based on Norberto Bobbio’s theory of Left and Right and suggests a combination with statistically robust measures drawn from the data provided by the Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP). The fundamental features of the proposed index are: first, Left and Right are theoretical concepts which should be accounted for in the empirical analysis. Second, the Left-Right dimension is time- and country-specific. Third, different statements have different meanings on a Left-Right scale. Fourth, the importance of the Left-Right dimension itself varies over time and across countries. Finally, the data have to be analysed adequately.},
language = {en},
number = {6},
urldate = {2023-09-17},
journal = {Party Politics},
author = {Jahn, Detlef},
month = nov,
year = {2011},
note = {Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd},
pages = {745--765},
}
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