POLICY DIMENSIONS AND THE CENTER-RIGHT A study of the center-right in Spain and Sweden

Sammanfattning: This thesis has two aims: to understand the motivations behind the political positions of center-right parties and to examine policy dimensions that are used to measure those positions. Political parties increasingly compete not only on the traditional left-right dimension but also on socio-cultural issues such as environmental protection, civil liberties, multiculturalism and nationalism. It is important to understand how the parties position themselves on these new issues. It is also important to study the dimensions that are used to analyze these socio-cultural divisions in order to see to what extent they can capture the positions of political parties and whether they overlook anything. In this thesis qualitative interviews with representatives of center-right parties in Sweden and Spain are used as well as a content analysis in order to examine how well the GAL-TAN scale can capture these issues. The results reveal that the motivations of party representatives are diverse and often multifaceted. They frequently overlap between the economic and socio-cultural dimensions as well as between the opposite poles of the socio-cultural dimension. There is also convergence between the Spanish center-right parties on some issues but not between the Swedish center-right parties. Thus more refined categories are needed in order to properly capture the positions.