I am looking at political literacy in Canada. I am using a simple left/right political scale and locating political parties at various intervals along the scale. The Green Party in Canada, however, is not as easy to situate as say the Liberal Party or Conservative Party. Some of their positions are progressive and others are more conservative. Where would I situate the Green Party in relation to the NDP?
I am a social scientist in a Canadian PSE setting and have noticed in my research a little known group from the 1920-40s known as the League for Social Re-Construction (historian Michel Horn wrote a book on them in the 1980s). This group of academics and former Rhodes scholars provided the CCF with their brain trust and have been variously described as the true birth of the 'Canadian left'. This historical context may help you decide how best to answer this question.
Classic question. Doesn't work. These last years, they are a little left, in part because they were painted that way and some of the more right wing elements of the party essentially left.
I could go on for ages and ages (I once ran for the party even, and have an HBA in political science from a very top school), but I promise you, left-right does not work for this party. I encountered this problem myself when trying to model some things before. I think ... we just ended up using dummy variables for each party and dropped the whole left/right thing. So doing right-to-left 1=Conservatives, 2=Liberal, 3=NDP, and then what's Green? It just doesn't work.
Quite a lot of Greens are fiscally more conservative than the conservatives, but in social issues, are almost always more liberal.
Hi there,
To me they would more clearly on the LEFT.
Cheers,
Dan
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Social Science