Mapping the south European ideological space: the impact of globalization on party discourse in Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to offer a comprehensive account of the structure of ideological space in Southern Europe and contribute to the ongoing discussion concerning the impact of globalization on the domestic politics of European countries. We analyze party manifestos from Europe elections in Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal using multidimensional scaling. Even though our findings largely support the hypothesis that components of the globalization divide tend to transform the content of the traditional cultural-political dimension, we observe that this transformation occurs in different ways across national contexts.