RIGHT-LIBERTARIAN PARTIES AND THE NEW VALUES - A REEXAMINATION

Among the most noted and studied societal tendencies of recent decades have been those associated with structural change in industrial socie ties becoming postindustrial. Within political science, much attention has been focused on the behavioural and institutional effects of valu e change accompanying that transition, and especially on the diminishi ng impact of class and ideology on politics. Among the institutional e ffects have been (at times and in some places) decline in support for ''established'' parties and the rise of alternative political organiza tions, including new parties on both the left and right. Many of the n ew parties of the left, and especially those labelled ''left-libertari an'', are generally viewed as harbingers of things-to-come in the ''ne w'' politics-progressive vehicles, driven along by the tides of change . In contrast, the new parties of the right are generally viewed as co nservative, authoritarian, materialist reactions to change - represent ing transitional efforts to stop change and its effects. The latter pa rties presumably tell more about the past, the present, and efforts to preserve them, than about the ''new'' in politics. The purpose of thi s article is to explore the possibility that some of the new right-win g parties - especially those in social democracies - might themselves be viewed more accurately (or at least as justifiably, based on reinte rpretation of the available evidence) as reflections of new values and as vehicles of forward-looking change. If so, then those parties, lik e their left-libertarian counterparts, may tell us something about the future of postindustrial politics.