ترجمه سیاسی، متن ششم

Political Preferences

Each preference a person or apolitical party holds is often related to another preference in a clear fashion.For example, if you have a preference for increased gender equality you arelikely to also have a preference for increased minority rights. It is precisely because of this close relationshipbetween different preferences that people like Dalton argue we can group themtogether and summarize them in a single dimension, such as the left–right. Incontrast, Benoit and Laver were cautious of oversimplifying too much as peopleunderstand the left–right dimension to mean very different things in differentcontexts.

Most modepolitical scientists think in terms of two distinct dimensions that are notnecessarily related to each other. The first dimension we can think of as an economicleft–right dimension. This dimension is conceed with how far the state or thepolitical majority should intervene in the economic freedoms of its citizens.It is comprised of issues such as attitudes towards the welfare state, taxationand market regulation, where the left believes the majority should intervenewhile the right believes that the majority should not be able to intervene. Thesecond dimension is a social left–right dimension. This is conceed with howfar the state or the political majority should intervene in the social freedomsof its citizens. It is comprised of issues such as minority rights andlifestyle choices. Here the left tends to advocate the belief that the majorityshould not intervene in the social freedoms of its citizens while the right ismore in favor of social intervention. As such, the degree of interventionadvocated by a person who places themselves on the left of a left–rightdimension will depend on whether they are considering the economic or thesocial dimension.

Liberalism first emerged in the nineteenth century and was in favor ofextending social freedoms to greater proportions of society and also extendingeconomic freedoms. Conservatism, in many respects, evolved as a defenseagainst the threat of liberalism to the social power of traditional authorities,such as the church and the aristocracy. As such, it was in favor of interveningin citizens’ lives socially, but it had common ground on the economic dimensionwith liberalism. Given the hitherto agreement on the economic dimension betweenliberalism and conservatism, the emergence of socialism was the firsttime that the economic dimension became activated as a source of politicalcontestation. Socialism became a powerful political ideology with the extensionof the voting franchise to working class men. They represented a large mass ofthe population and they demanded redistribution of wealth through the welfarestate.

However, thismovement was, initially at least, socially conservative with many socialistsreluctant to extend the voting franchise to women and hesitant with regard toissues such as immigration due to the threat these were perceived as posing towhite, working class industrial men. As such, socialism was traditionally in favorof both economic and social intervention. The final ideology to consider is environmentalism,which evolved in the 1960s and 1970s and was non-interventionist on the social dimension,believing in the freedom of lifestyle choices, but much more comfortable withintervention on the economic dimension in order to protect the environment fromabuse by private interests.