5. LEFT-LIBERTARIAN
PARTIES I
Miloš Brunclík
HERBERT KITSCHELT
(1988): LEFT-LIBERTARIAN
PARTIES
1. left
■ mistrust of the
marketplace and private
investments
■ egalitarian and solidarity
appeals
2. libertarian (liberal)
■ reject the authority of
private or public
bureaucracies to
regulate individual and
collective conduct
■ Respect for individuals
and their freedoms
■ Self-governance
■ Decentralized
communities
Criticism of modern societies
1. Priority given to economic growth in
public policy making
2. unacceptable risks to the environment
3. unacceptable risks to human life
▪ restrain the autonomy of the individual
citizen
▪ Restrictions placed on spontaneous
participation
▪ Policy making limited to elites of
well-organized interest groups and parties
▪ Overly bureaucratized welfare state
subject individuals to centralized controls
COMMON VALUES
■ Self-ownership
■ property of one's own person, expressed
as the moral or natural right of a person to
have bodily integrity, and be the exclusive
controller of one's own body and life
■ Participatory democracy
■ Decentralization
■ Egalitarian redistribution
■ Collective ownership of natural
resources
■ Post-material issues
Typical voters
Younger, well-educated middle class
employed in human services (teaching, health care, social work)
left-of-center political convictions
subscribe to "postmaterialist" values
sympathize with environmental, feminist, and peace movements
THREE MAJOR TYPES OF PARTIES
1. Feminist parties
2. Environmental (green)
parties
3. Pirate parties
FEMINISM
❑ Women‘s movement to advance
the social role (private and
public) of women
❑ Two major beliefs
1. Women disadvantaged
because of their sex
2. This disadvantage can
and should be overthrown
Very diverse and heterogeneous
▪ Ideological sources
▪ Socialism
▪ Liberalism
▪ Radical feminism
▪ Policies
▪ Suffrage
▪ Equal success to education
▪ Increase in the number of women in public life (politics), business
(managerial position)
▪ Legalization of abortion
▪ Abolition of demeaning dress codes
FEMINISM
Until 1960s gender divisions
rarely considered as
relevant and important
CHALLENGE TO THE
CONVENTIONAL POLITICAL
ATTITUDE
1. Gender divisions – natural and inevitable
2. Male-female division of labour in society
generally accepted
3. Dictated by biology: women suited to
domestic and household existence as they
can bear and suckle children
4. Men – greater physical strength – suits them
to the outdoor and public world of work
Feminism as an ideology
❑ until 1960s and 1970s: not an ideology
▪ Rather a doctrine within socialism and/or liberalism
❑ Rise of radical feminism: gender division: of
central importance
▪ Conventional ideologies seen as inadequate
▪ Feminism = a cross-cutting ideology
❑ Ideologically diverse, but common ground
▪ Public – private divide
▪ Patriarchy
▪ Sex and gender
▪ Equality and difference
Public – private divide
❑ Conventional position: politics = arena of public life
▪ Family life and personal relationships = arena of private
life
▪ »»» gender issues = non-political
▪ Jean Ehlstein (1981): Public Man, Private Woman
▪ Feminist position:
▪ personal is political
▪ Break down the divide
▪ Ways: transfering the responsibility for family life to
public institutions (welfare state support, nursery
schools…)
▪ However: danger of politicizing the private sphere
Patriarchy
❑ Feminism: gender = the deepest and political most
important social cleavage
❑ Patriarchy = power relations between men and women
▪ Supremacy of men over women in family, workplace, education,
economic life…
▪ Unequal distribution of rights, duties, and entitlements in society
▪ Under-representation of women in senior positions in business,
politics, public life…
❑ Feminism seeks to fight against male
supremacy/dominance
❑ Radical feminism: patriarchy = systematic,
institutionalized, and pervasive form of male dominance
Sex and gender
❑ Sex refers to biological differences between men
and women
❑ Sex differences should have no social, political or
economic consequences
❑ Gender – cultural phenomenon
❑ Gender differences: socially, politically constructed
❑ Gender: if socially constructed, it can be changed
and even demolished
Sex and gender
❑ The most common of
all anti-feminist
arguments: gender
divisions are natural
▪ Nature designed
women to bearing and
rearing children
▪ „Biology is destiny“
Sex and gender: feminist position
❑ Childbearing is unique, but link
between it and child-rearing is
cultural, not biological
❑ Domestic responsibilities should
be equally distributed between
men and women
❑ Physical strengths typical for men
are no longer as relevant as in
the past
Equality and difference
❑ Common goal: to overthrow patriarchy
❑ However: contrasting notions of equality
1. Liberal feminism: equality = equal access to
the public realm
2. Socialist feminism: equal rights are
meaningless unless they refer to economic
rights (gender pay gap, ownership of wealth,
waged x unwaged labour…)
3. Radical feminism: mostly concerned with
equality in family and personal life
(childcare, domestic responsibilities…)
Feminist parties
1983-2000 Iceland
1979 Canada
1995 Germany
2005 Sweden
2015 Norway
Common issues
❑ Not only women, but advocacy of gender minorities
❑ Support for oppressed people, including immigrants
❑ Pacifism
❑ Green
❑ ….
Electoral „success“
❑ Irrelevant from
electoral point of view
❑ But…
▪ Feminist issues largely
taken over by
mainstream parties
(contagion theory)
▪ Rapid rise of
progressive issues in
the Western world