Liberal parties in Europe and human rights emphasis

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2486549_(Table of contents)

Liberal parties are mostly neglected by the literature on political parties despite their central role in establishing European liberal democracies. This thesis aims to contribute to the contemporary literature on liberal parties by examining 33 European democracies and covering a time period including observations of 75 years. The empirical analysis shows that liberal parties are distinguishable from the other party families on their emphasis on human rights and freedom. Then, this thesis investigates the impact of economic conditions on liberal parties’ relative emphasis on human rights and freedom. The findings illustrate that higher levels of unemployment rate decrease liberal parties’ relative emphasis on human rights and freedom and increase their relative emphasis on economic issues. Its effect on the relative emphasis on human rights and freedom issue and economic issues is substantive when the distributions of the dependent variables are considered. This finding may demonstrate the liberal parties’ responsiveness to changing needs of the electorate and a value change in politics too. The responsiveness of political parties to the electorate is a vital function of political parties for a well-functioning democracy. Nevertheless, a decline in the salience of human rights and freedom issue in elections may result with degradation of liberal democratic values in protracted economic crises