Range Between Outer-Right and -Left Parties

Description

The range between the two most distant parties on the left-right dimension in a party system is one of the earliest, first used by Crepaz (1990), and most widely used measures of ideological polarization. While the measure has mostly been applied to CHES expert ratings and MARPOR estimates of party positions, it is in principle applicable to any estimates of party positions, regardless of their source.

Operationalization

The range is defined as follows: $$range = max(lr_p)-min(lr_p)$$

where $lr_p$ is the left-right position of a party $p$ and the measure captures the difference between the left-most and right-most party, i.e., the range.

polaR

# Import Data
cses_imd <- polaR_import(source = "cses_imd",
						 path = "path/to/dataset.dta")


# A range can be computed on the individual level or between already aggregated scores, this can be specified using 'level'
# The data output can be provided with individual scores or aggregated to a country/year level with 'aggregate'
# Where different issue dimensions are available, 'issue' can be issued to specify the one to use
range_data <- range(cses_imd,
					issue = "leftright",
					level = c("individual", "aggregate"),
					aggregate = c(TRUE, FALSE))

Visualization

Use cases

Publications that use this measure: