Are concepts of left and right meaningful outside the European context

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Are concepts of left and right meaningful outside the European context?’The traditional left-right axis has since the finish of World War One and particularly since the end of World War Two dominated not just European politics but world politics as the political right and the political left came to represent democracy and the side of ‘good’ and anti-democracy and supposed ‘evil’. Despite the apparent contradictions, the socialist left (of varying degrees of extremity) commanded a significant amount of electoral support in most mainland European countries. Since the end of the Cold War era the concepts of left and right in politics has changed somewhat. In considering whether these concepts are meaningful in a non-European context, three key topics need to be examined. Firstly, the political left and the political right and their interrelationship need to be defined as concretely as possible. Secondly, it has to be examined whether these concepts have any meaning in politics today and finally, we need to decide then if the concepts are meaningful outside of the European context. This will be achieved through the broad study of six national political systems within and outside of Europe.The traditional left-right axis refers to the simple attempt by political commentators to classify the mainly economic (but also social) philosophy of individuals and political parties on a one-dimensional scale. It was devised originally while the French Revolutionary Assembly was in session as a method of distinguishing the radicals (democrats), who sat on the left side of the chamber, from the conservatives (monarchists), who took seat on the right hand side. As socialism replaced democracy as the dominant
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radical ideology, it came to characterise what would become “leftism”, while conservatism would, with democratisation and liberalisation, come to represent capitalist interests. Today, the left is traditionally defined as broadly socialist, in favour of a sizeable welfare state and supportive of trade unions and workers’ rights, while the right is fiscally conservative, concerned with minimising the size of government and promoting maximal individual economic freedom. Additionally, the left is generally seen as promoting social liberalism, the separation of church and state, (in the past) divorce and the option to terminate a pregnancy. The right, conversely, is broadly morally conservative, often ...

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