Herbert Kitschelt

Herbert P. Kitschelt is a political science scholar and George V. Allen Professor of International Relations at Duke University, North Carolina. Kitschelt's key intellectual contribution is arguably his redefinition of the competitive space for political parties in Western Europe. Kitschelt claims that the traditional patterns along which parties competed had progressively shifted to a new pattern of political division: left-libertarian versus right-authoritarian as a result of social changes in advanced capitalist societies. He was also one of the first scholars to systematically study the rise of Green parties in Europe, which he understood as a form of 'left-libertarian' politics.