Criteria for Classification

Christian: 1. Parties that claim to base their ideology and programs on the authority of the Catholic Church, the Bible, or religious philosophy. 2. Parties that defend the temporal interests of the Catholic Church or oppose or seek to reduce the separation of church and state. 3. Parties that are widely perceived as satisfying either of the above criteria, even if religion is no longer an important aspect of their ideology, program, or policies. (P. Demócrata Cristiano Chileno)

Secular: 1. A residual category, i.e., parties that do not claim to base their ideology and programs on the authority of the Catholic Church, the Bible, or religious philosophy. 2. Parties that challenge the temporal interests of the Catholic Church or support the separation of church and state. (Mexican PRI)

Right: 1. Parties that target heirs of the traditional elite of the 19th century without moderating their discourse to appeal to middle- or lower-class voters. (Chilean P. Conservador) 2. Parties that employ a fascist or neo-fascist discourse. (Chilean P. Nacista) 3. Parties sponsored by a present or former military government, as long as they have a conservative (organicist, authoritarian, elitist, looking to the past) message and are not primarily personalist vehicles for particular authoritarian leaders. (Brazilian ARENA)

Center-Right: Parties that target middle- or lower-class voters in addition to elite voters by stressing cooperation with the private sector, public order, clean government, morality, or the priority of growth over distribution. (Argentine UCeDé)

Center: 1. Parties that stress classic political liberalism--broad political participation, civic virtue, the rule of law, human rights, or democracy--without a salient social or economic agenda. (Argentine Unión Cívica Radical). 2. Governing parties whose policies are so divided between positions both to the left and to the right of center that no orientation that is mostly consistent between elections is discernible.

Center-Left: Parties that stress justice, equality, social mobility, or the complementarity of distribution and accumulation in a way intended not to alienate middle- or upper-class voters. (Venezuelan Acción Democrática)

Left: Parties that employ Marxist ideology or rhetoric and stress the priority of distribution over accumulation or exploitation of the working class by capitalists and imperialists, and advocate a strong role for the state to correct social and economic injustices. They may consider violence an appropriate form of struggle, but do not necessarily. They do not worry about alienating middle- and upper-class voters who are not already socialist intellectuals. (P. Socialista de Chile; any Communist party)

Other Bloc: Any parties that represent an identifiable ideology, program, principle, region, interest, or social group that cannot be classified in left-right or Christian-secular terms. (Unidad Catamarqueña of Argentina, Movimiento Revolucionario Tupak-Katari of Bolivia, P. Verde-Ecologista)

Personalist: 1. Parties that base their primary appeal on the charisma, authority, or efficacy of their leader rather than on any principles or platforms, which are too vague or inconsistent to permit a plausible classification of the party in any other way. (P. Nacional Velasquista of Ecuador) 2. Independents. 3. Unusually heterogeneous electoral fronts formed to back a candidate. (P. Agrario Laborista of Ibáñez in Chile)

Unknown: Parties on which no information other than their name is available and whose names give no reliable clues about their orientation. "Comunista" and "Izquierda" are taken as reliable indicators of parties of the Left, while "Socialista" is not. Other common labels that are not considered reliable are Revolucion(ario), Demócrata, Democrático, Radical, Liberal, Laborista, Social, Popular, Auténtico, Republicano, Renovador, Independiente, Agrario, or names of leaders.