Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master in Political Science
Keywords
No Thumbnail Available
Authors
Issue Date
2024-07-13
Language
en
Document type
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Title
ISSN
Volume
Issue
Startpage
Endpage
DOI
Abstract
Liberal parties play an important role in European politics, often acting as kingmakers in coalitions.
These parties are, most basically, described as being right-wing on economic issues and centre to
progressive on cultural issues. Despite this important role, liberal parties are understudied, which makes
it scientifically interesting to study them. This study examines the differences and similarities of
European liberal parties and voters over the last twenty years. European integration has grown over
these two decades, it is interesting to see whether the parties have also moved more towards each other.
An over-time analysis is therefore important to do. Ideological morphology provides the theoretical
foundation for this analysis. Parties and voters were measured by looking at progressive values, antiauthoritarian
values, economic views, and immigration stances. The used methods in this study are Kmeans
clustering, factor analysis and multinomial regression analyses. Liberal voters are analysed by
using three parties that represent that sub traditions which are Venstre (Denmark), D66 (the
Netherlands), and the FDP (Germany). I find that liberal parties are generally much more diverse in
their policy preferences than liberal voters. Liberal parties and voters sometimes move towards each
other, but overall, they do not seem to converge more than they diverge. Furthermore, parties and voters
do not seem to be moving in tandem with each other on issues.
Description
Citation
Supervisor
Faculty
Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen