Welcome back to Politics 101 bite-sized crash course in politics. This will encompass multiple aspects within the field of politics from common terminologies to full-blown feuds, hopefully in an informative and humorous way. Let's dive into the topic for today, The Political Compass.
Since the entire aspect of Politics 101 is to simplify mainstream political ideas we'll do the same with the political compass. The Political Compass plots your political orientation on a cartesian plane. There are two axes which focus upon your wing orientation and your preference to the authority of the government.
Since I have already covered the wings and their economic policies in the previous post we'll focus on the Y-axis this time.
The Y-Axis:
The Top: Affinity for authority
The X'Y and the XY quadrants i.e the Authoritarian Left and the Authoritarian Right quadrants like the ideas of government intervention, a state wherein which the government controls multiple aspects of a normal citizens life, with heavy policy regulation and a strong army, these quadrants also believe that major policies should be kept with the government and minimal public interference should be seen. Some well-known ideologies which stem from the top half of the compass are those of fascism, of communism* and dictatorships. Some famous leaders of the top half are Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler and Theresa May. (It is essential to understand that each of these leaders is placed on different points of the compass, it doesn't mean that Theresa May was like Adolf Hitler, it only shows that they were leaning to the authoritarian side of things.)
The Bottom: Big Government Bad
The X'Y' and the XY' quadrants i.e the Libertarian Left and the Libertarian Right quadrants dislike the ideas of government intervention, a state wherein which the government controls multiple aspects of a normal citizens life, with heavy policy regulation and a strong army, these quadrants also believe that major policies should be run through with the residents of the state and minimum government interference should be seen. Some well-known ideologies which stem from the top half of the compass are those of libertarianism, of communism* and activism. Some famous leaders of the bottom half are Emanuel Macron, Gandhi, Chomsky, Rucker and Friedman. (It is essential to understand that each of these leaders is placed on different points of the compass, it doesn't mean that Gandhi was like Chomsky, it only shows that they were leaning to the Libertarian side of things.)
The X-axis
The x-axis focuses on the economic temperament of a person, to read more about this visit: https://thealphatheory.wixsite.com/thealphatheory/post/politics-101-an-introduction-to-politics
The Test and Results: It's best to take things with a grain of salt
If you want to take the test, visit https://www.politicalcompass.org/test but remember your ideologies will change according to the stimuli offered.
*: The original idea of communism talks about a complete government-dominated state at first but then slowly letting go of control.
Till Next Time,
- Aadi Sardesai