The Asymmetrical Universes of Political Parties and Citizens in Advanced Industrial States: The Content and Structure of Left-Right Opinions.

This paper explores the content and structure of party policies and individualopinions in advanced industrial countries on three common dimensions of left-rightdisagreement: wealth redistribution, immigration and moral outlooks. Opinions abouteach of these dimensions are widely associated with left-right self-placement, but theevidence suggests that these opinions are not connected to one another. This raises aquestion: if there is no logical or empirical relationship between the different dimensionsof opinion that give meaning to the language of left and right, then why do all of theseopinions predict left-right self-placement in many different countries?The analysis proceeds by examining individual-level public opinion data from theWorld Values Survey and the European Social Survey, as well as data from surveys ofexperts about party policies. The results of that analysis indicate that policies andopinions about wealth redistribution, immigration and morality are bundled together byleft-wing political parties and among their politically engaged supporters in theelectorate. For most respondents, however, these opinions are not at all organizedtogether in coherent left-right terms. Further analysis reveals that formal educationexplains a good deal of the fragmentation of left-right opinions in the electorate. Andthat the coherence of these opinions among the left-wing elite may stem from mass-elitedifferences in the kinds of factors that generate support for wealth redistribution. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]