Party Positions in the EP -- p13
plus the general dimension of left-right, with the higher loading for each of the two factors
highlighted in boldface. The results clearly confirm our earlier interpretation: left and right
issues cluster into two orthogonal component sets, one related to classic national left and right
issues from national party politics, and the second related clearly to EU issues. Moreover, the
general left-right dimension loads very strongly with the first factor, which bundles together
the classic socio-economic dimensions of national-level left-right policy. The second factor
represents a purely EU dimension, with parties grouping themselves independently into pro-
integration stances on one hand, and Euro-sceptic positions on the other.1
[Table 4 about here]
In the context of previous findings, our results provide strong support for the two-
dimensional model of policy competition, based on two orthogonal dimensions consisting on
one hand of classic issues of left-right socio-economic policy, and support for European
integration on the other. These two latent factors, moreover, explain more than three-quarters
of the variance in party positions on specific policy dimensions. Left-right is positively
associated mainly with the first latent factor of socio-economic left-right, but also mildly
positively associated with support for European integration. As suggested by Hooge and
Marks (2001), we also found an association between socio-economic left-leaning policy and
greater support for European integration, although our exploratory analysis would need
further investigation and a more structured model before drawing any firmer conclusions.
So far, our analysis has looked only at the European Parliament level, yet there are
important differences between the policy space at the EU level and the level of national
political parties. As we demonstrate in our final section, the EU policy space is not simply a
direct mapping of national patterns of party competition from the domestic to the
supranational level. In the next section we take a first look at the degree to which policy
competition between domestic political parties is congruent with party competition and
affiliation at the EP level.
1 We have tested the robustness of these results in a variety of additional ways, such as excluding the left-right
dimension from the factor analysis, and then regressing the left-right placements on the factor scorings. These
results (not shown) strongly confirm those in Table 4.