ДИНАМИКА ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОГО СПЕКТРА ЕВРОПЕЙСКИХ ПАРТИЙНЫХ СИСТЕМ (1990-2021)

Полис. Политические исследования. 2023. № 1. С. 11–28.

Makarenko B., Petrov I.

The article analyzes the prerequisites and features of the evolution of political party systems in 25
member countries of the European Union in the past three decades. To complete the analysis, the authors
elaborated a unique index of measurement of party’s manifestos, which enabled them to provide a typology
of ideological and political doctrines of political parties. This typology is laid out in a two-dimensional
space with crosscutting axes: socio-economic (horizontal) and “cultural”, or “non-economic values”
(vertical). The main trends of the evolution, according to the authors (as described in the first sub-chapter of
the article), are a leftward shift of the complete spectrum of parties, a growing salience of the “non-economic”
axis, particularly for rightwing and populist parties, a weakened dominance of the “vital center” of mainstream
center-right and center-left parties, the rise of populism, and a significant variation of evolution scenarios of
party systems in post-communist countries. The second and third parts discuss the features of evolution27Полис. Политические исслеИодваин. 2023. я 1. C. 11-28
of, respectively, center-left and center-right parties, which serve in most European countries as a nuclei
of party systems. Center-left parties are suffering losses at elections due to growing competition with diverse
opponents, such as the “new left”, “greens” and multiple varieties of populists. Center-right parties are in
search of a viable strategy to compete with right-wing populists. The authors conclude that the changes in the
party systems in recent decades were caused by objective prerequisites and were very substantial, though party
systems retained their basic properties and remained the main institutions to represent public interests
in the domain of politics. This also applies to populist parties which became a legitimate component of
European party systems.
 

Keywords: Европейский Союз, политические партии, популизм, консерватизм, либерализм, посткоммунистические страны, European Union, liberalism, партийные системы, populism, postcommunist countries, conservatism, political parties, социал-демократия, social democracy, party systems