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The relationship between issues and an individual’s left–right orientation

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Abstract

The major body of the literature about left–right orientation finds that values and attitudes determine an individual’s position in the left–right dimension. Regarding values, it is assumed that these are stable over (a long period of) time, and hence affect individuals’ left–right orientation. Attitudes are usually measured as issue preferences, which can change over time, cross-nationally and also in their importance for people. Therefore, the relationship between issues and left–right orientation is less clear, and requires more research. We argue and show with data from the European Social Survey Implementing a Panel Component project (2012), conducted in the Netherlands, that the relationship between issue preferences and left–right orientation is conditioned by the importance that people give to the respective issues. Issues that are important for people affect their left–right orientation, while they can use their left–right orientation to form an opinion about an issue which they do not consider important.

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Notes

  1. Freire (2008) restricts this to Western Europe.

  2. We are grateful to Kees Aarts and Sedef Turper for the provision of the data set.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research and Expertise Centre for Survey Methodology, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Passeig Pujades, 1, Barcelona, 08003, Spain

    Wiebke Weber & Willem E Saris

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  1. Wiebke Weber
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  2. Willem E Saris
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Correspondence to Wiebke Weber.

Appendices

APPENDIX A

European Social Survey Panel Component

The ESS Implementing a Panel Component project is a developmental project aiming at facilitating a biannual cross-sectional ESS. The project grant was awarded to Bojan Todosijevic and Kees Aarts and conducted by Sedef Turper, Kees Aarts and Minna van Gerven-Haanpaa at the University of Twente (NOW grant 471-09-003). The panel is designed to have four subsequent waves with 8-month intervals in between and started with ESS Round 5, October 2010. Respondents were recruited by probability sampling of households, being representative of the Dutch population over 16 years of age. The total number of valid interviews was 1829, which corresponds to a response rate of 60.03 per cent.

For a detailed description of the sampling method and response rates, we refer to the documentation report of the ESS Round 5 (European Social Survey (2012)). For the subsequent waves, 1500 of those respondents were approached to participate in the panel study; 500 of them were randomly selected for face-to-face interviews and the remainder for online interviews. The response rates were 72 per cent and 69 per cent for the second and third waves, respectively.

APPENDIX B

See Table B1.

Table B1 Variables
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Weber, W., Saris, W. The relationship between issues and an individual’s left–right orientation. Acta Polit 50, 193–213 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2014.5

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