CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Tkalec, Igor |
|---|---|
| Title | Comparing political parties through capitalism: alterations in policy preferences of left-wing parties in different versions of capitalism - cases of British Labour Party and German Social-Democratic Party |
| Summary | This thesis studies the alterations of left-wing political parties’ policy preferences in different institutional settings – liberal market economy and coordinated market economy – in the context of the rightist, neoliberal political and economic agenda that has become dominant in the beginning of the 1980s. In particular, the research focuses on the British Labour Party which operates in a liberal market economy and the German Social Democratic Party that operates in a coordinated market economy. The main argument is that left-wing political parties which operate in liberal economies (the British Labour Party) have altered their policy preferences closer to neoliberal agenda to a greater extent than the parties in coordinated economies (the German Social Democratic Party), especially in the period after 1980 – when neoliberal agenda became dominant. Policy preferences alterations are studied through quantitative analysis of frequency occurrences of political parties’ references to particular policies (anti-neoliberal or neoliberal) in their election manifestos prior and after 1980. The main findings of the analysis are compatible with the main argument – in the period after 1980, the British Labour Party altered its policy preferences towards the neoliberal agenda to a larger extent than its German counterpart. The institutional setting, constitutional structure of the state, and the nature of party competition in the national political arena are factors that I consider as explanatory variables for these developments. |
| Supervisor | Enyedi, Zsolt Sandor |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/tkalec_igor.pdf |
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