Lo schema destra-sinistra: rappresentazioni dello spazio politico in Europa ed Italia

The aim of this work is to analyze the meaning, the role and the functioning of the left-right opposition in Western Europe Democracies. In this work, the left-right opposition is conceived as a social representation of political space which realize a synthesis of the main values conflicts of European societies. In this way, the left-right dimension allows every actor of the political system to evaluate his position in relation to the position of others actors, to establish his identity and to perform correspondent actions. This conception of left-right opposition is closely related to the emergence of modernity: indeed, such device to ordinate the political conflict become necessary in a pluralistic society, where the political fight is focused on the desirable end-state of society. This conception of left-right opposition was elaborated after an analysis of the way the two terms were conceptualized in literature. .. [edited by Author]