Political spectrum

"Political compass" redirects here. For the website, see The Political Compass.

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A political spectrum is a system to characterize and classify different political positions in relation to one another. These positions sit upon one or more geometric axes that represent independent political dimensions.[1] The expressions political compass and political map are used to refer to the political spectrum as well, especially to popular two-dimensional models of it.[2][3][4][5]

Most long-standing spectra include the left–right dimension as a measure of social, political and economic hierarchy which originally referred to seating arrangements in the French parliament after the Revolution (1789–1799), with radicals on the left and aristocrats on the right.[1][6] While communism and socialism are usually regarded internationally as being on the left, conservatism and reactionism are generally regarded as being on the right.[1] Liberalism can mean different things in different contexts, being sometimes on the left (social liberalism) and other times on the right (conservative liberalism or classical liberalism). Those with an intermediate outlook are sometimes classified as centrists. Politics that rejects the conventional left–right spectrum is often known as syncretic politics.[7][8] This form of politics has been criticized as tending to mischaracterize positions that have a logical location on a two-axis spectrum because they seem randomly brought together on a one-axis left–right spectrum.

Some political scientists have noted that a single left–right axis is too simplistic and insufficient for describing the existing variation in political beliefs and include other axes to compensate for this problem.[1][9] Although the descriptive words at polar opposites may vary, the axes of popular biaxial spectra are usually split between economic issues (on a left–right dimension) and socio-cultural issues (on an authority–liberty dimension).[1][10]

  1. ^ a b c d e Heywood, Andrew (2017). Political Ideologies: An Introduction (6th ed.). Basingstoke: Macmillan International Higher Education. pp. 14–17. ISBN 9781137606044. OCLC 988218349.
  2. ^ Petrik, Andreas (3 December 2010). "Core Concept "Political Compass". How Kitschelt's Model of Liberal, Socialist, Libertarian and Conservative Orientations Can Fill the Ideology Gap in Civic Education". Journal of Social Science Education: 4–2010: Social Science Literacy I: In Search for Basic Competences and Basic Concepts for Testing and Diagnosing. doi:10.4119/jsse-541. Archived from the original on 22 June 2019. Retrieved 27 June 2019.
  3. ^ Sznajd-Weron, Katarzyna; Sznajd, Józef (June 2005). "Who is left, who is right?". Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and Its Applications. 351 (2–4): 593–604. Bibcode:2005PhyA..351..593S. doi:10.1016/j.physa.2004.12.038.
  4. ^ Lester, J. C. (September 1996). "The Political Compass and Why Libertarianism is not Right-Wing". Journal of Social Philosophy. 27 (2): 176–186. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9833.1996.tb00245.x. ISSN 0047-2786. S2CID 144774197.
  5. ^ Stapleton, Julia (October 1999). "Resisting the Centre at the Extremes: 'English' Liberalism in the Political Thought of Interwar Britain". The British Journal of Politics and International Relations. 1 (3): 270–292. doi:10.1111/1467-856X.00016. ISSN 1369-1481. S2CID 143494130.
  6. ^ Knapp, Andrew; Wright, Vincent (2006). "1 French political traditions in a changing context" (ebk). The Government and Politics of France (5 ed.). Taylor and Francis. ISBN 978-0-203-40260-3. France invented the terms Left and Right early in the great Revolution of 1789– 94 which first limited the powers of, and then overthrew, the Bourbon monarchy.[dead link‍]
  7. ^ Griffin, Roger (1995). Fascism. Oxford University Press. pp. 8, 307. ISBN 978-0-19-289249-2.
  8. ^ Eatwell, Roger (2003). "A 'Spectral-Syncretic' Approach to Fascism". In Kallis, Aristotle A. (ed.). The fascism reader. Routledge. p. 71. ISBN 978-0-415-24359-9.
  9. ^ Fenna, Alan; Robbins, Jane; Summers, John (2013). Government Politics in Australia. Robbins, Jane., Summers, John. (10th ed.). Melbourne: Pearson Higher Education AU. pp. 126 f. ISBN 9781486001385. OCLC 1021804010.
  10. ^ Love, Nancy Sue (2006). Understanding Dogmas and Dreams (Second ed.). Washington, District of Columbia: CQ Press. p. 16. ISBN 9781483371115. OCLC 893684473.