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A Time to Attack: The Looming Iranian Nuclear Threat, by Matthew Kroenig

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
Published date01 December 2016
AuthorPatty Zakaria
Date01 December 2016
DOI10.1177/0020702016688391
Subject MatterBook Reviews
SG-IJXJ-71-04-BR 659..671 Book Reviews
663
‘‘to the right’’ a party is, but how much ‘‘of the right’’ – a term much more appro-
priate to the metaphor of family resemblance, which eschews spatial conceptions.
That Cochrane’s explanation rids our concepts of left and right of their spatial
dimension is also evident in his f‌inding that the centre, rather than being a mod-
erate position between the more extreme positions of left and right, is in fact a
vacuum, devoid of any characteristics whatsoever. While many individuals choose
to position themselves in the political centre, when they are asked to rate their
views of various political parties, centrist individuals are less likely to view centrist
parties favourably than they are to view parties on the centre-right or centre-left
favourably. A position on the centre, therefore, is not a position at all, but merely
an indication of the lack of a clear position, or indif‌ference between the two sides.
Finally, Cochrane applies his approach to the Canadian case to examine
whether Canadian politics truly are devoid of left and right, and whether they
have changed in recent decades. He demonstrates the lack of coherent positions
of the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties throughout the mid-twentieth
century, during the era of brokerage politics, and the clear realignment of the
Conservatives on the right and the Liberals on the centre-left, beginning in the
late 1970s. Cochrane further demonstrates how the Canadian public slowly picked
up on this change over the subsequent decades and eventually aligned itself along
these new party lines. Having achieved this alignment of voters, Cochrane argues,
the new structure of the Canadian political map is likely to endure into the future.
This novel approach to understanding the structure of the political map of‌fers a
useful analytical tool to examine changes and shifts in both political parties and the
electorate. Cochrane’s answer to the age-old question of the meaning of left and
right in politics...

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