Party Identifiers Across the Ideological Spectrum Political scientist Klaus von Beyme provides a useful framework for analyzing political parties. It is based upon the notion that most of the parties in European liberal democracies can be categorized into one of nine major groups. He argues that these categorizes can also be applied to Australia and New Zealand, but not to liberal democracies in North and South America, Asia, etc. The following distribution (the average percentage of votes obtained by parties in each "family" during elections in the 1980s) is from Alan Ware's Political Parties and Party Systems. To fully understand the table, be sure to scroll down for the explanation of party families and their "scores".

SCANDINAVIA
Country	COM	SOC	ECO	LIB/  RAD	AGRAR	REG/  ETH	XIAN  DEMS	CONS	RWING  EXTRM	Other
Denmark	1	46	3	17	0	0	2	21	7	0
Finland	12	25	3	1	25	5	3	23	0	0
Sweden	6	45	3	11	13	0	2	21	0	0
Norway	0	44	0	3	7	0	9	31	4	0
Iceland	15	17	0	39*	19	0	0	39*	0	Womens' Alliance (8)
NORTH AMERICA
Country	COM	SOC	ECO	LIB/  RAD	AGRAR	REG/  ETH	XIAN  DEMS	CONS	RWING  EXTRM	Other
U.S.A.	0	0	0	99	0	0	0	0	0	0
Canada	0	20	0	34	0	1	0	0	0	Progress.  Cons.(42)
EUROPE
Country	COM	SOC	ECO	LIB/  RAD	AGRAR	REG/  ETH	XIAN  DEMS	CONS	RWING  EXTRM	Other
Great Britain	0	30	0	24	0	0	0	42	0	0
France	12	35	1	18	0	0	0	25	7	0
Italy	29	16	1	8	0	1	36	0	6	0
Spain	7	45	0	0	0	9	27	0	0	0
Germany	0	39	5	9	0	0	46	0	0	0
Netherlands	1	33	0	19	0	0	0	0	0	D'66 (7)
Switzerland	1	25	5	26	0	0	23	11	1	0
OTHER
Country	COM	SOC	ECO	LIB/  RAD	AGRAR	REG/  ETH	XIAN  DEMS	CONS	RWING  EXTRM	Other
Australia	0	47	0	42	10	0	0	0	0	0
New Zealand	0	43	0	40	0	0	0	0	0	Social  Credit (9)
Israel	3	35	0	33	0	0	0	0	0	0
Japan	9	25	0	9	0	0	0	0	0	Lib. Dems. (48)  Komeito (9)

 

Further AnalysisIn order to understand these diverse groupings, two pieces of information are provided. The first is a table of the party groups' stances on issues of public ownership and social policy. They are derived from Ware's analysis which places all of the parties in any grouping along a 1 (far left) to 20 (far right) continuum. They average listed in the table is merely that, an average for all parties in a particular grouping. There are variations for each party in each country. The second piece of information is a brief description of each family grouping. Words in regular print are direct citations, words in italics are paraphrases.

Party	Public Ownership Score	Social Policy Score
Communist	3	4
Socialist	8	6
Ecological	8	4
Liberal	15	8
Agrarian	country specific	country specific
Regional/ Ethnic	country specific	country specific
Christian Democrats	14	16
Conservative	16	12
Right-Wing Extreme	18	19

Communist parties:
Communist parties generally have their ideological roots in Marxism-Leninism and tend to espouse such ideas as the doctrine of historical inevitability, economic determinism (the theory that the methods of production and exchange of goods control the form of a state's political and social organization and shape the intellectual and moral development of its people), labor value, the "inner contradictions" of capitalism, class conflict, capitalist colonialism, the destruction of the bourgeoisie, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the socialist revolution and the "withering away" of the state. For the first five decades of communist parties they were virtually under control of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union some European communist parties had moved towards "Eurocommunism". For example, the Italian Communist party recognized the legitimacy of the Italian liberal democratic state and propounded parliamentary regulation of non-competitive sectors of the economy rather than state ownership. Nevertheless, public ownership remained a central value of Communism....

U.S.
Japan
China



Socialist and Social Democratic parties:
Socialist parties generally advocate economic collectivism through governmental or industrial group ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods. They generally seek to replace competition for profit with cooperation and social responsibility and to secure a more equitable distribution of income and opportunity in a society. Socialist parties differ in their approaches as to how best to achieve socialism. It has been a powerful movement in Europe since the mid 1800s. Socialist parties mobilized around the working class. For much of their early history they were in conflcit with political authority.....but populism was a serious rival. Like socialists, populists opposed those in power but sought to mobilize majorities accross class lines....Socialist ideology changed again in the years after the Second World War. Support for liberal democratic political structures became even firmer. But, more importantly, in attempts to broaden their electoral base beyond the organized working class, Socialist parties abandoned their long-term aim of the 'socialization' of the economy in favor of a mixed economy in which the state would assume responsibility for economic management along the lines suggested by the theories of British Liberal John Maynard Keynes. This modification of Socialist ideas has been described by some writers as social democracy....

Great Britain
Israel

Ecological parties:
Of all the familles spirituelles, the Ecology movement is the newest....there are grounds for regarding environmentalism as having become a new kind of politics of the left....There are two reasons why 'left' enviormentalism has become dominant over the sorts of conservationism with which a traditional Conservative, for example, would feel at home....Many of the goals favoured by Ecologists could not be attained without a high degree of state intervention, and by co-ordinated international intervention....As far as a permissive social policy is concerned, the electoral imperative is, perhaps, the most important factor. The sorts of middle-class voters that are attracted to environmentalism would not be willing to accept a conservative social policy in these areas, so that Ecology parties risk alienating few potential voters when they adopt highly liberal social policies.

Great Britain
Sweden
Japan

Liberal and Radical Parties:
Liberalism generally seeks to change the political, economic, or social status quo to foster the development and well-being of the individual, free from the restraints of government. Liberals regard the individual as a rational creature who can use his/her intelligence to overcome human and natural obstacles to a good life for all without resorting to violence against the established order. "The first political parties were groupings of the bourgeoisie who looked to political organization to secure their interests against the landowners who controlled the state....they wanted to remove state restrictions...to provide for a strict separation of state and society....key elements of the Liberal creed were legal and political rghts for citizens....some Liberals argued against the extension of the franchise to those who had no 'stake' (that is, property)--such as the poor or women. Radicals...wanted to extend the franchise...there was a tradition of Republicanism--of opposition to monarchial power....Liberals and Radicals into conflict with the Church due to their belief in the separation of power....support for permissive social policies. According to Ware, the American Democratic Party would be considered a left liberal party and the Republicans a right-liberal party.

Great Britain
China

Agrarian parties:
These were parties of small farmers and peasants that emerged as the strains of industrialization and economic depression created rural discontent at the end of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century....they developed in smaller countries in which the process of nation building was not concluded until fairly late and in countries where towns were quite small. Scandinavia and Eastern Europe were the main areas of their development. However, there was a second type of agrarian party that emerged in both the United States and Australia as a revolt against the financial interests that were seen to be undermining agriculture. In general, agrarian parties were to the right of the political spectrum on both economic and social issues and their members could be absorbed later in the twentieth century by other parties of the right.

Sweden

Regional and Ethnic parties:
In most liberal democracies there are significant minorities that speak a different language from the dominant group, or have a different culture or traditions, or have a quite distinct set of economic interests that derive from the territory they occupy....It is difficult to categorize these parties on issues since their stance in specific to the country in which they exist.

Great Britain

Christian Democratic parties:
The origins of Christian Democracy lie in the nineteenth century but it was not until after the Second World War that Christian Democratic parties became powerful forces in European politics. The Catholic Church in the nineteenth century was highly suspicious of the rise of the secular state whcih it saw as a threat to its own authority. However, particularly in Protestant-dominated Germany, there was a perceived need by Catholics to protect their interests....However, papal suspicion of liberal democracies continued into the inter-war years and in the 1920s Fascist parties were seen as a bastion for defending Catholic interests. The discrediting of authoritarian regimes in the 1930s led the Church to turn to political movements that supported liberal democracy. With this backing Christian Democratic parties could flourish and could use the considerable resources of the Church to mobilize electorates. But the parties were led by lay people....Christian Democratic parties are amongst the most conservative on permissive social values....But in relation to economic issues the situation is very different. Catholic theology has never valued a wholly unrestricted form of capitalism, and Christian Democratic parties have tried to mobilize Catholic workers as well as the Catholic middle class.

Norway

Conservative parties:
Conservatism as a philosophy is generally seen as a defense of the status quo from major changes in political, economic, or social institutions in society. It generally maintains that political stability can best be maintained only when any forces of change can be moderated by a slow and careful integration of new elements into time-tested institutions. Conservative parties emerged in opposition to Liberals. They were opposed to change--largely to protect their own economic and political interests, but also partly out of a sense of paternalistic responsibility for the politically powerless who would be harmed by the absence of restraints on economic markets...Conservatives have tried to develop policies and approaches that are consistent with their long-standing opposition to general social theories and to radical change. Primarily, they have sought to attract the votes of the growing middle-class salariat, but appeals to national honour, symbols, and unity have been used to attract other voters--including the working class....According to Ware, conservative parties have gone in one of two directions: either to move towards the center on social policy and concentrate on economic matters or to move further to the right on social policy issues (The New Right). Great Britain

Israel
Sweden
Norway

Right-wing Extremist parties:
These parties are hard to classify. The parties that would have to be included are a disparate bunch that are linked together only by the fact that their policies in a number of areas are well to the center of the political spectrum....there have been a few instances of anti-regime movements of the right... They are often fascist, an ideology contemptuous of both democratic parliamentary government and communism. The tend to advocate a political system which incorporates the principle of the leader (dictator), a one-party state, totalitarian regimentation of economic and social activity, and the arbitrary exercise of absolute power by the regime. Unlike communism, fascism retains private ownership of land and capital but most economic activity is controlled and regimented by the state through a system of national socialism. Fascism often arises in a crisis and was thought to have been dealt a destructive blow by defeat of the Axis powers in World War II however, neofascism---especially in the form of military dictatorship--is on the rise throughout much of the world.

Great Britain