Left has division over customs around the world – 10/01/2023 – Power

The agenda of customs that made President Lula (PT) position himself in the final stretch of the 2022 electoral campaign against abortion, unisex bathrooms and state interference in family education has infiltrated the left not only in Brazil.

International surveys on political parties show that parties in power with a more leftist view of the economy are divided when it comes to issues like these.

It is not exclusive to this political field. The right is also not homogeneous, but has a greater concentration of acronyms among the traditionalists.

To compare economic thinking with the sociocultural vision of heads of government around the world, the Sheet used two indices of ideological positioning.

Calculated based on the evaluation of hundreds of experts from different countries, both use the defense of a more prominent role of the State in the area as a left-wing criterion in the economy.

For the countries of Latin America and the European Union, in addition to Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom, the Ches survey (Chapel Hill Expert Survey) was considered, carried out by academics from around the world and financed by the University of Carolina North – Chapel Hill, in the United States.

In the case of Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela, it provides the position of the head of state. For other countries, the position of the party in power in the country was taken into account.

In terms of behavior, Ches evaluates the position of the subtitles in relation to social and cultural values, on topics such as abortion, divorce and same-sex marriage (Gal-Tan scale).

For countries in North America, Asia, Africa, Oceania and Eastern Europe, where Ches was not carried out, the report used as a parameter the V-Party index, created by the V-Dem Institute, at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden.

The V-Party indicator used as a parameter for the customs scale was minority rights, which the institute defends as respect for human rights without any distinction of race, color, sex, religion or others.

Parties that believe that the will of the majority should never determine policies if they violate the rights of minorities were considered more libertarian, and those that believe that the will of the majority must always prevail were considered more traditional.

From these two surveys, data was collected on the ideology of the parties in power in 99 countries that have 80% of the world’s population (read more about the methodology in the text below).

Of the total, 43% were considered by Ches and the V-Party to be on the left in the economy. Another 23%, from the center, and 33%, from the right.

Regarding customs, 31% of the parties in power were placed on the libertarian party scale; 28% were moderates; and 40%, traditionalists.

Among left-wing government parties in the economy, 42% were considered libertarian in matters of customs. Another 23%, moderates, and 35%, traditionalists.

Among the right-wing parties in power, 48% were classified as more traditionalist, 21%, libertarian, and 30% were located in the intermediate spectrum.

Among the governments of leaders elected by parties considered left-wing in economic terms, but conservative in morals, are those of Peru, Venezuela and Mexico.

Peruvian President Dina Boluarte came to power after the dismissal of Pedro Castillo, whose deputy she was.

Aligned to the left on economics, Castillo positioned himself against gay marriage, the right to abortion and what he called, like right-wing conservatives, “gender ideology”.

In Venezuela, dictator Nicolás Maduro has a history of homophobic statements.

In Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador was also positioned in Ches as more traditionalist.

In his government, he appointed a series of women to relevant positions, but had a series of clashes with feminist movements.

Among the points of criticism is the alleged omission of his government regarding femicides and statements considered sexist.

Other left-wing parties in the economy classified as traditionalist in customs are those that govern nations considered by V-Dem to be autocracies, such as Chad, North Korea, Cuba, Eritrea, Hungary, Laos, Nigeria, Turkmenistan and Zimbabwe.

In the case of Hungary and Poland, which also faces democratic erosion, the parties were considered by Ches as left-wing in the economy, but right-wing in general — this total index is not present in the V-Party.

A reason that helps explain this apparent contradiction is addressed in an article by researchers responsible for Ches.

Using survey data, they conclude that, in Europe, party positions on economics and sociocultural issues do not go hand in hand, unlike what happens in many Latin American countries such as Brazil — the PT, for example, was located on the left in economy and libertarian in customs.

Factors such as migration and environmental issues, more relevant in the European political debate, help explain the different situation on the continent, says Bruno Bolognesi, professor of political science at the Federal University of Paraná.

He states that imagining a single position for economic and socio-behavioral issues also does not make sense in the daily lives of ordinary citizens. “If you go out on the street and ask someone about abortion to find out their position on incentives for the auto industry, they’ll think you’re crazy.”

It turns out that, in some countries, this overlap actually occurs in political parties. Professor at FGV, political scientist Cesar Zucco explains that, for different reasons, there is a tendency in Brazil and the United States for politics to be one-dimensional, that is, knowing the position on a behavioral issue allows values ​​to be mapped onto other areas.

In theory, it may seem contradictory for the right to defend less State in the economy and more intervention in people’s individual choices, such as pregnancy or marriage. In practice, it is not, says Elisabeth Friedman, professor at the University of San Francisco, in the USA.

“The right reinterprets the left’s claims about individual rights as an intervention aimed at reinventing society and the family”, says she, editor of the book “Seeking Rights From the Left: Gender, Sexuality and the Latin American Pink Tide” (in Portuguese, Seeking rights from the left: gender, sexuality and the pink wave in Latin America).

On the other hand, she sees the traditionalism of the Latin American left in customs as the result of a mix of personal conviction of rulers with a strategy of electoral survival.

According to her, this characteristic manifested itself in some left-wing governments on the continent in the period from 2000 to 2015, but only in part of the themes.

“At times there seemed to be a trade-off between recognition of same-sex relationships and [menos atenção a] reproductive rights, for example”, he says.

In general, he states, most leftist governments of the period invested in improving the living conditions of poor women and there was an improvement in female representation, in addition to, in many cases, the recognition of same-sex unions and the possibility of use of the social name for trans people.

On the other hand, she points out as a contradiction the fact that these governments did not adopt measures that would structurally change gender and income inequality.

IDEOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION METHOD

The survey of Sheet on the ideology and customs of parties in power covers countries that meet two criteria: they are present in the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (Ches); or have at least 3 million inhabitants and data on V-Party.

In all cases, the ideological position of the party of the head of government was taken into account: president in the case of presidential regimes, prime minister or chancellor in the case of parliamentary regimes.

Absolutist monarchies such as Saudi Arabia could not be evaluated, since the ideological classification takes parties into account.

Countries for which there was no data on the governing party in the surveys were also not included in the survey, such as Chile and Colombia, for example.

The most recent round of the Ches survey is from 2019 in the case of Europe, and 2020 in the case of Latin America.

In the case of the V-Party, the evaluation was carried out in 2020, but in some cases the party’s performance was only evaluated in an earlier period.

Due to the time interval, the surveys do not capture possible changes in the parties’ positions at a more recent time.

Ches and V-Party use different scales. In economics, V-Party has a scale from 0 to 6 where each point corresponds to a spectrum, from the extreme left to the extreme right.

Now, Ches uses a purely numerical scale from 0 to 10, in which 0 is the leftmost point, 10 is the rightmost point, and 5 is the center. Parties that received a score from 0 to 4 were located on the left, and from 6 to 10, on the right.

In both surveys, numbers with decimal places of 0.5 or more were rounded up, and the others, rounded down.

The ideological classification of parties made by political experts is used as a reference in academic research on the subject and is considered more accurate than that which analyzes party manifestos.

Academic article shows considerable convergence between Ches and V-Party indicators, but there is still a degree of subjectivity involved.

Assessment segmentation can also lead to results that go against common sense, as in the case of China and the United States. In economics, the V-Party considers the Democratic Party to be center-left, while the Chinese Communist Party, by rounding, is on the center spectrum.

The subjectivity and time lapse of expert assessments also lead to indicators, in specific cases, that are not very consistent with current affairs. This is the case of Malawi and Indonesia, classified on the more libertarian spectrum by the V-Party, but with strong legal discrimination against LGBT+ people.