Do Citizens Perceive an Empty Left-Authoritarian Quadrant?

• In Event: Why Are There No Left-Authoritarian Parties in Rich Democracies?

Abstract

While many citizens hold left-wing positions on economic issues and traditional/authoritarian positions on the socio-cultural dimension, there is a lack of parties that are positioned in the left-authoritarian quadrant of the two-dimensional space. This observation, however, is entirely based on work that makes use of objective indicators of parties’ positions - sourced from expert surveys or party manifestos - to describe party competition. To understand the sources of this gap in representation and voters’ responses to the absence of left-authoritarian parties, we need information on how voters perceive parties’ positions in a multidimensional space. Such information allows verifying whether voters also perceive a lack of options in the left-authoritarian parties, and - if not - on which dimensions and for which types of parties the perceptions of citizens differ from the objective positions that parties take. We make use of original surveys from eleven countries in which citizens and experts were asked to the main parties, on six issues - covering the economic and socio-cultural dimension. By combining data on citizen and voter perceptions of party positions, and analyzing the connections between them, our projects sheds light on the individual-level mechanisms that underpin the absence of left-authoritarian parties in established democracies.

Authors

• Ruth Dassonneville, Universite de Montreal

• Patrick Fournier, Universite de Montreal

• Zeynep Somer-Topcu, University of Texas at Austin