This post is the first in a series of three posts which were
originally part of one article. I decided to post my article “Proposing a
New Political Map” in three parts because it became too long for a
single post. This article serves as an introduction to my understanding
of politics. Ideas presented in this article will form the basis of
future posts.
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Introduction
The map of political ideologies which is proposed by the Political Compass site, (as well as by other sites which purport to tell people their political worldview, such as the Political Spectrum Quiz and Politopia)
is flawed. While it is an improvement over the traditional left-right
political spectrum, I feel that it leaves out certain ideologies,
including my own. In this article I will attempt to put forward a
different approach to understanding the various political ideologies
which people adhere to. I am motivated to do so partially by a desire to
understand the political landscape and partially by a need to have my
egalitarian ideology recognised as being distinct from liberalism.
Section 1: The Current Ideological Map and its Flaws
According
to sites such as Political Compass, people can be sorted into
ideological categories based on whether they support more government
control over society or less government control over society. Social
issues and economic issues are placed on two different axes. As a result
people are divided into four different categories Authoritarian
Leftists (who want more government control over both social and economic
issues), Authoritarian Rightists (who want more government control over
social issues but less government control over economic issues),
Libertarian Leftists (who want less government control over social
issues but more government control over economic issues) and Libertarian
Rightists (who want less government control over both social and
economic issues.)
By focussing on the Political Compass website, I
do not mean to suggest that the problems I am describing are specific
to the site. It is merely one example of many sites which use a similar
system to classify people politically. I am discussing the site because
it is the most popular, most well known site of this nature.
A Different Kind of "Liberal Bias"
The
Political Compass site has a liberal bias (though not the sort which
conservatives typically accuse it of having.) Before I go any further I
should explain what I mean by the term “liberal”, since the word often
causes confusion. It is often used to describe people who favour less
government influence over the private realm, but more government
influence over the economy (often in the form of increased social
spending.) It is also used to describe those who favour less government
control over the economy. For example, the term neo-liberal describes
those who favour the deregulation of corporations and reductions in
government spending. In this article I will use the term “liberal” to
describe the more general philosophical sentiment that restrictions on
individual behaviour (which can exist as a result of laws, social
stigmas or philosophical/political ideologies) are always negative and
freedom-robbing. This sentiment is used to justify the deregulation of
both the social and economic realm.
When I say that the Political
Compass site promotes a liberal outlook, I am not suggesting that the
test compels people to answer the questions in a liberal way. This
accusation may in fact be valid, but I will discuss it in another
article. I will instead argue that the site defines people in terms of
where they stand in relation to liberalism, making liberalism the
ideology against which all other ideologies are measured.
The site
divides its users into liberals and non-liberals, while ignoring the
fact that there are different types of non-liberals (in both a social
and economic sense.) According to the site’s political map, one can
either endorse more government control over society or less government
control. Governments are evaluated only quantitatively, not
qualitatively. In other words, no one is ever asked what type of
government they would like to live under or what ends they want their
government to aim for. They are only asked whether they want more or
less government or to put it another way, big government or small
government. It is assumed that all “big governments” (both those which
are real and those which can be imagined) are more or less the same and
thus all “big government” supporters are more or less the same. This
could easily be an example of what psychologists call the “Out-group homogeneity effect” in
which members of the out group are seen as being more similar to each
other than they actually are. If non-liberals are the supposedly
homogenous out-group, then it logically follows that liberals are the
“in group”. Even if the creators of the test do not identify as liberal
themselves, they are sorting people into ideological groups the way a
liberal would.
Unexplained Trends
The
political map used by the site fails to explain certain ideological
trends. For example, according to the test (which the site uses to
determine one’s political alignment) opposition to pornography is a
symptom of social authoritarianism (or conservatism.) However, political
ideologies which are generally considered to be progressive such as
such as revolutionary socialism, communism and radical feminism, have,
both in the past and present, taken a stance against the pornography.
These movements hold other positions which are labelled as socially
libertarian by the test, such as support for abortion rights and an
accepting attitude towards of gayness. Some might argue that these
movements are therefore centrist (or at least, closer to the centre than
similar movements which endorse pornography), at least when it comes to
social issues, but this does not match with the way these movements are
generally perceived by society, nor does it match up with the way they
perceive themselves.
The test does not ask questions about
prostitution, an issue which is closely related to that of pornography
and which also poses a challenge to the site’s political map. The
revolutionary leftist movements referenced above are not the only ones
arguing that prostitution should not exist. Countries which are
generally viewed as being progressive such as Sweden, Norway and Iceland
have adopted the Nordic Model
(also known as the Swedish model), a set of laws aimed at ending
prostitution by legalising the selling of sex, while criminalising the
buying of sex. At this point in time, the left leaning president of
France, Francois Hollande, and his government are also seeking to
implement such laws. Meanwhile conservative politicians in Norway seek
to get rid of the Nordic Model.* This clearly does not fit with the
common view that to be socially progressive is to support total “sexual
liberation” and that to oppose such an agenda makes one conservative.
Environmental
issues also present a challenge to the way in which the Political
Compass site divides people into social libertarians and social
authoritarians. Questions about the environment are mostly absent from
the test. The only environment related question featured in the test is
presented as an economic question about whether government regulation is
needed to prevent corporations from causing environmental damage. In
reality, the issue of environmental destruction deserves more than one
question and protecting the environment cannot merely be regarded as an
economic issue. The kind of social transformation required to stop
global warming will likely involve major changes to the way in which
people live their day to day lives.
Environmentalism is typically
viewed as a socially progressive movement, not a socially conservative
one. However, the sorts of changes it calls for are not compatible with
the social libertarian approach of encouraging “individual freedom”
within the private realm. For example, environmental activists often
argue that governments should aim for a world in which people use public
transport or bicycles instead of cars, while a consistent social
libertarian would argue that the type of transport an individual chooses
to use is none of the government’s business.
Reasoning versus Positions
The
last issue I have with the approach taken by the Political Compass site
is that it focuses on people’s positions rather than their reasons for
holding such positions. This is of course a common problem with
political alignment tests. Some sites (such as this one)
do inform test takers of the arguments made by both sides of any given
political issue. However, test takers are not allowed to indicate which
argument they find convincing or what kind of reasoning they used to
arrive at their position. Thus such tests do not account for the fact
that two very different ideologies can encourage people to take the same
stance on a given issue.
For example, some proponents of gay
rights do not support attempts to legalise gay marriage because they are
critical of marriage as an institution and believe that legalising gay
marriage will grant unwarranted legitimacy to marriage. These gay
marriage opponents should not be placed in the same category as
conservatives who oppose gay marriage because they believe that gay
relationships are inferior to straight relationships. When it comes to
determining someone’s political ideology the reasons they have for
holding their positions should matter just as much, if not more than,
the positions themselves.
I recognise that political tests may be
created with the intention of helping people decide who they are going
to vote for in an upcoming election, in which case the focus on
positions, rather than reasoning, makes sense. However these tests often
purport to tell people what their political ideologies are without
making any references to political parties. Any test which attempts to
determine people’s political ideology should be aimed at uncovering the
broad philosophical principles that cause people to have the positions
they do on political issues. This cannot be done simply by asking people
whether or not they agree with certain policies. This does not mean
that questions about issues and policies should not be used in political
tests, but rather that people’s stances on such things should be seen
as symptoms of an underlying political worldview.
*More information on the Nordic Model can be found at these sources
- http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/why-the-games-up-for-swedens-sex-trade-8548854.html (a pro-Nordic Model article)
- http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/prostitution-laws-what-are-the-nordic-and-new-zealand-models-1.1603213 (an anti-Nordic Model article)
- http://feministcurrent.com/8263/podcast-prostitution-not-a-job-not-a-choice-a-talk-by-janice-raymond/ (a pro-Nordic Model speech, which discusses how various countries have responded to the model and to prostitution in general)
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In
the next post I will put forward a new political map and discuss where
different ideological movements belong on that map. I later hope to show
how this new map explains the current unexplained trends discussed
above.
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