Conferences

The terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ are widely used in Political Science as well as the public opinion to organize party competition, to describe the political position of individuals, to shape their connections with political parties, and to characterize public policies. Most of the current debate focuses on their actual salience in post-industrial, eco-friendly and/or globalization concern societies, and the blurring of left and right distinctions in public policies. Still, there are some pending questions such as: (1) their ultimate meaning, (2) their consistency and reliability, (3) their different use across individual, collective actors, and countries, (4) their treatment as a continuous or categorical variable and its implications, (5) its proper combination with other (secondary?) dimensions of politics, and/or (6) if there is one or several ways of measuring them. This session proposes to reflect about some of theses topics.