ABSTRACT
"The political landscape has changed. Right is no longer right, left no longer left." To this recent observation by Dutch politician Boris Dittrich those of many others, including Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, can be added. The chapter looks the Party Manifesto Data to determine changes in the political cultures of Western countries in the postwar era (1945-1998). The one-dimensional left-right scale is intended to measure the positions of political parties on a one-dimensional left-right continuum and hence comprises both class issues and cultural issues. The chapter points out that Ronald Inglehart's index for postmaterialism is not particularly useful for mapping changes in the political culture. It finds the political parties in the Western world generally that the salience of class issues has remained remarkably stable since World War II. Although polarization over those issues has declined, they are as salient as ever and polarization over them has certainly not disappeared.
