Liberty, Authority, and the New Politics: A Reconsideration

Many scholars have argued that political values in advanced democracies have significantly changed and specifically that the right and left have realigned along new value dimensions. Herbert Kitschelt is one of the principal proponents of this view, arguing that political conflict in mature democracies is increasingly organized around a right-authoritarian versus left-libertarian dimension. We reconsider this argument both theoretically and empirically. Our replication of Kitschelt’s analysis raises doubts about construct validity, as well as about his empirical results. Second, our analysis of survey data from the Euro-Barometer and World Values Surveys leads us to question the claim that the political left is libertarian and the right authoritarian. Third, we find no significant evidence that conservative partisans less enthusiastically embrace the most common forms of democratic participation than do those on the left. Finally, our analysis of the contents of their respective programs does not demonstrate that leftist parties are more libertarian than those on the right or that, in recent decades, the former have particularly trended in a libertarian direction.