DETERMINING THE IDEOLOGY OF POLITICAL PARTIES – METHODS AND PROBLEMS
Keywords:
political parties, ideology, classification, the left, the right, expert scoreAbstract
The concept of political ideology is inseparably related to the concept of political party. Parties tend to identify themselves with certain ideologies, either through their name, program or some other mean of recognition. Comparative political science in particular is often occupied with researching different aspects of political parties, as a permanent actor in modern political systems. A growing need for accurate classification of parties is therefore related to the increasing number of studies determining the connection between political actors (in most cases, political parties) and different outcomes of policies (whether it is the case with the results of certain public policies, international relations, economic outcomes; or other, less precies categories, such as good governance, government efficiency, regime stability etc.). In that sense, the party ideology is often taken as an important explanatory variable in a number of researches, so it is necessary to devise the corresponding categorial apparatus for ideological classification of political parties. This paper will firstly define the concept of political ideology, and then present the short analysis of different qualitative and quantitative methods for determining the parties’ ideological orientation. Finally, the paper will evaluate the applicability of the presented methods, especially when comes to determining the ideological orientation in young transitional democracies with unstable party systems, as is the case with Serbia.
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