Party Families, Ideological Structures and the Content of Left-right Orientations

The present paper uses the Comparative Candidate Survey, which includes elite surveys fielded in 13 European countries, to identify the type of ideological structure that exists at the level of political supply and compare the position of different party families (new radical left & greens, orthodox communist, social democrats, liberals, Christian democrats, conservatives and radical right) across countries. This is achieved by measuring issue and value orientations of the candidates running for parliamentary office. Using survey items measuring socioeconomic issue orientations, authoritarian-libertarian issue orientations, but also items measuring attitudes towards globalization and European integration, we want to explore the relative importance of party family versus geographical region in determining candidates’ location on the ideological space. The second objective of the paper is to see how the (expected) different ideological structures in each party family and/or country determine the left-right content.