We use (underutilised) 2019 Chapel Hill Expert Survey data on these countries. We examine the data quality and the structure of party systems. These are EU candidate countries, that may send representatives to the European parliament in the future, making their politics even more relevant.
First, regarding data quality: Expert disagreement is similar to other regions on the general left-right dimension, GAL-TAN, and the EU. There is more disagreement on the economic left-right dimension, but we rule out that this is because experts would have different views of this dimension.
Overall, I thought it was a lot of fun to write with these two co-authors for the first time. Thank you @adeagafuri.bsky.social and @jacobgunderson.bsky.social for inviting me to this project!
This important paper generalises to Europe what was theorized and shown in the Netherlands over a decade ago by @catherinedevries.bsky.social, @hakhverdian.bsky.social and @bramlancee.bsky.social. Left-right self-placements are becoming more associated with immigration attitudes over time in Europe
Second, regarding the party systems: They are largely unidimensional, likely shaped by cultural competition, and weakly programmatic. This differs both from the economy-centered unidimensional party systems in Latin America, as well as the more multidimensional party systems in the rest of Europe.