The traditional parties on both the right and the left have once again fared dismally in the French presidential elections. Does this mean that the old left-right divide is dead and supplanted by the culturally driven GAL-TAN divide?
The ongoing presidential elections in France are very interesting from a political science perspective, on one hand the poor showing from the traditionally powerful parties i.e. the Republicans and the Socialists seem to lend credence to the idea that 21:st politics is no longer organised on the left-right economic axis but rather on the so-called GAL-TAN cultural axis, but on the other hand one of the reasons why the challenger to the incumbent president Macron is the right-wing Marine Le Pen rather than the hard left Jean-Luc Melenchon seems to be that Le Pen focused on pocketbook issues like inflation rather than her ideological opposition to immigration and the European project. Is the left-right divide dead in France, or has the conflict just found new expressions?
The left-right divide is originally a French invention; or at least those terms. Left and right took on their political meanings after the French revolution when the seating arrangements in the National Assembly tended to follow political leanings, so it’s fitting to discuss the proposed post left-right political axis in the French context. The GAL-TAN scale was proposed by Hooghe, Marks, and Wilson in 2002 and posits that the main cleavage in European politics is based on cultural values rather than economic interests. In essence, political parties should be understood to be somewhere on the scale between GAL which stands for Green, Alternative, Liberal and TAN which stands for Traditional, Authoritarian, Nationalist, and the main issue is cultural values like openness to immigration, support for LGBTQ people, and views on climate change rather than the level of redistribution in the economy. GAL-TAN used to feature quite frequently in the Swedish debate but seems to have lost support over the last five years or so, despite being a useful tool for understanding politics in parts of the world. As mentioned, the scale was developed in a European context, but can be very useful for understanding the American presidential election of 2020; the argument that Biden’s GAL won against Trump’s TAN in an election primarily about cultural issues is very compelling in my view.
One of the main issues with the GAL-TAN scale however is how the sides are often framed in moral terms with GAL frequently being coded as the morally superior side. Lars Johansson of the liberal Timbro think tank states that: “the GAL/TAN scale is built on the self-image of those who identify with the GAL camp, rather than on a descriptive depiction of real differences in views”. In the context of the French election then, framing Macron as the liberal champion against the authoritarian left in Melenchon and the authoritarian right in Le Pen might be a familiar description to liberally-leaning readers. But if one espouses the view that GAL stands for progress and TAN for regression one could erroneously think that the grievances groups which support candidates like Le Pen have are unimportant, and thus miss real problems in society.
As the previous French presidential election showed, these cultural cleavages are often cleavages between urban and rural voters, both in France and elsewhere, where rurals tend to lean TAN and urbans tend to lean GAL. However, people in rural areas also tend to have lower incomes compared to their urban peers, so it could be that GAL-TAN is simply another incarnation of the right-left divide of yesterday.
In conclusion then, the GAL-TAN scale can be a useful tool for understanding political differences, as long as one is careful not to bake in any moral judgements in either side of the spectrum, and as long as one is aware that cultural values aren’t formed in a vacuum but rather formed by one’s social and economic surroundings.
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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
Sources:
Original quote from Lars Johansson:
"GAL/TAN-skalan bygger på självuppfattningen hos dem som identifierar sig själva med GAL-lägret, snarare än på en deskriptiv skildring av verkliga åsiktsskillnader. "
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