Ideological labels work like compass directions in politics; they provide a means by which citizens and other political actors orient themselves within a political arena. Ideally, they allow citizens to distinguish among political choices without requiring them to possess significantly high levels of information. Political elites aid this process by employing these labels to communicate party programs. For ideological labels to function as useful heuristic aids, there must be minimal variation around their meaning, and they must reference relevant dimensions of choice. By using the Salamanca survey of political elites to assess the symbolic and substantive significance of these labels in Latin America, this chapter contributes to our understanding of the left-right semantics in the region and, moreover, gives us insight into the programmatic structuration of these party systems.

The analyses in this chapter reveal several interesting tendencies. First, we find significant variance in the left-right stances taken by legislators across party systems, with some party systems leaning more toward the right (e.g., Bolivia), some toward the center (e.g., Chile), and some more toward the left (e.g., Uruguay). Second, there is variation in the substantive meaningfulness of left-right labels across left and right party families, with parties on the left associating relatively greater issue content with these labels. Third, our analyses reveal significant variation in the substantive meaningfulness of left-right semantics across party systems.