Europeans' left-right orientations: increasingly centrist and/or irrelevant?

Abstract

Several studies reveal that there is little empirical support for the ´end of ideology´ thesis. However we know that there has been a drive towards the centre (-rigth) of the major centre- left parties, which have been converging with the neoliberal consensus, and that the clarity of policy alternatives offered by political parties do count for the way citizens think about (and make use of) the left-right divide. Moreover, there are several claims by politicians, political commentators and journalists that the left-right divide is no longer useful to understand politics of our times. The major research questions in the present paper are the following. First, are left-right orientations losing their relevance for individual electors in European countries? Second, are the electorates in European countries moving towards the centre? In both cases, the answers are basically negative: there is too much diversity to talk about general trends but in any case the empirical evidence points predominantly in the opposite direction. After the conclusion, the paper ends by suggesting some cues for future reseach about how to explain the differences found across countries.