THE PARTISAN AND THE VALUE-BASED COMPONENT OF LEFT-RIGHT SELF-PLACEMENT - A COMPARATIVE-STUDY

This article takes Ronald Inglehart's and Hans-Dieter Klingemann's (19 76) study regarding party and ideological components of left-right ide ntification as a point of departure for a comparative analysis of the relationship between party choice, value orientations and left-right s elf-placement. The empirical analysis is based on eight and thirteen c ountries from 1981 and 1990, respectively. Party choice is still the d ominant predictor of left-right self-placement although its dominance is not as large as was shown in Inglehart and Klingemann's analysis. H owever, if value orientations are considered prior to party choice in a causal sense, value orientations have a larger impact than party cho ice in most countries. Fragmentation of the party system and the divis ion between advanced and less advanced societies are used to explain t he cross-national variations. When the explained variance in the left- right scale is decomposed into unique components explained by party ch oice and value orientations and a compounded component, a strong compo unded component is characteristic in advanced societies, while a stron g partisan component is found in less advanced societies and in less f ragmented party systems.