The End of Ideology — or is It? Reconceptualising Political Parties’ Vision of the Future in Europe and Latin America

Do political parties still articulate visions of the future? Although the “end of ideology” thesis suggests that mainstream parties have diluted their ideological profiles to appeal to the broadest possible electorate, these parties nonetheless continue to advance distinguishable sets of policy positions. In parallel, niche parties are commonly understood to be grounded in narrower, more clearly defined policy agendas. Yet the prevailing assumption that parties primarily offer voters more or less cohesive bundles of policy proposals remains largely untested. Do parties still provide voters with broader visions of what their societies might look like in the future, beyond individual policy commitments? Moreover, are parties operating in regions with distinct democratic and political trajectories, or belonging to different party families, more or less likely to articulate such visions? Finally, have these visions changed since the end of the Cold War, and if so, have they become more positive or more negative over time? This paper addresses these questions through a systematic analysis of party programmes from major political parties in Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America since 1990. Employing Large Language Models, the study identifies and classifies parties’ visions of their societies’ futures according to their clarity, substantive content, and evaluative tone. Building on this analysis, the paper explains cross-regional, temporal, and intra-party patterns in the articulation of future-oriented visions. In doing so, it empirically tests long-standing but largely unexamined assumptions in the party literature and offers a reconceptualisation of the role political parties play in presenting future-oriented offerings to voters.