Political spectrum
A political spectrum is a way of comparing or visualizing different political positions. It does this by placing them upon one or more geometric axes symbolising political dimensions that it models as being independent of one another.
Many editors of electowiki prefer to think of the political spectrum as a multi-dimensional entity. Few editors agree on the best abstract definition of this spectrum.[1]
Spatial model
The spatial model of voting puts voters and candidates in a multi-dimensional space, where each dimension represents a single political issue,[2][3] sub-component of an issue,[4] or candidate attribute,[5] even including non-political properties of the candidates, such as perceived corruption, health, etc.[2] Voters are then modeled as having an ideal point in this space, with a preference distance between themselves and each candidate (usually Euclidean distance), i.e. a voter may be closer to a candidate on gun control, but disagree on abortion. Voters are then modeled as voting for the candidates whose attributes or policy proposals are nearest to their ideal point (or strategically voting to try to minimize their distance to the actual winner).[6] Other models that follow the idea of “closeness” are called proximity models.[7]:93, 96
Mathematically (and spatially), a line on a political spectrum can be defined by:
- a dimension n, representing the number of independent issues under consideration. Voters are represented by points in V = [0,1]n.
- a voter density function v: V → ℜ
- a distance function d: V × V → ℜ that is positive definite and symmetric and satisfies the triangle inequality. Ballots are determined from the assumption that voters prefer candidates which are closer (according to this distance function) to them.
Ultimately, these are projections of a multi-dimensional political space onto a space of fewer dimensions, to generalize and make discussion simpler.
One-dimensional
A single-dimensional model envisions a horizontal line, with voters distributed along a single left-to-right axis. This is frequently referred to as the left–right political spectrum, and is how many people classify political positions, ideologies and parties. The people on the ends are said to practice extremism, and the intermediate stance is called centrism. On this type of political spectrum, left-wing politics and right-wing politics are often presented as opposed, although a particular individual or group may take a left-wing stance on one matter and a right-wing stance on another; and some stances may overlap and be considered either left-wing or right-wing depending on the ideology.[8] In France, where the terms originated, the left has been called "the party of movement" and the right "the party of order".[9][10][11][12]
Using the formulas above: n=1, v(x)=1, and d(x,y)=|x-y|. The directions on this spectrum are normally referred to as left and right.
Horseshoe theory
- main article: horseshoe theory
What is often called the "horseshoe theory" claims that the extreme authoritarian economic left (Communism) is adjacent or close to extreme authoritarian economic right (neo-reactionism/fascism). A classification that follows this thought must then place these two close by or next to each other: either by using dimensions where they naturally fit next to each other, or by making opinion space curved so that going in the direction of fascism leads to Communism.
Two-dimensional
While the "horseshoe theory" appears two-dimensional, it is obviously just a variation on the left-right political spectrum.
There are many two-dimensional political spaces, many of which have enough credible citations to have articles on English Wikipedia. These include the following:
The Nolan chart and the Political Compass are two popular examples, which can be seen as rotated versions of each other. The Pournelle chart is another variation with a different set of axes. Other two-dimensional models are described below.
Three Telos Model
The "Three Telos Model" or "Triangle Political Map" is two-dimensional political model where voters tend to spread out in three directions. It describes political beliefs based on the core axiom of the philosophy, where the voter's depart from the center based on their core beliefs.
Each of the three colors (the "equality leftist", the "freedom liberal" and the "tradition conservative") have different criteria. The criteria are listed as:
- Justification
- Philosophical foundation
- Prestige idenifier
- Moral foundation[13] (see Moral foundations theory on Wikipedia)
- Vision of nature [14][15][16] [17]
Three or higher dimensions
Political opinion can be divided into essentially any number of dimensions. Some other examples include the 3-dimensional Sapply Compass, the 4-dimensional 8values space, and the 9Axes space.
One study of German voters found that at least four dimensions were required to adequately represent all political parties.[18]
There has been references to many other political compasses that are similar, orthogonal or even contradictive.
- https://www.reddit.com/r/Politicaltests/wiki/listoftests (archive https://archive.md/amTxo)
- https://l-lists.com/en/lists/0isll4.html (archive https://archive.md/YATlp)
- https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalCompass/comments/flzinl/list_of_every_test_i_know_including_some_you/ (https://archive.md/MOS9q)
In the end, it is difficult to model the behaviors of human beings in such a way that they can be reduced to simple numbers and political spectra as lines on a graph.
Nonlinear spaces
Not all ways of classifying a political ideology need map to a cube or use the standard p-norm distances.
Different political philosophers also argue that a good political ideology must also incorporate additional constraints. For instance, from the liberal economic position, Milton Friedman advocated for the necessity of putting one of two desired values ahead of the other by stating "A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both". From the economic collectivist position, anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued that a good political ideology must have both significant amounts of freedom and equality, stating that "Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice; socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality". These positions are not incompatible since both argue for the same result however the difference lies in what is controlled and what is expected to arise naturally.
Such additional constraints would impose further structure on a political classification chart; however, it may still be useful to represent political ideologies that violate the constraints. Even if they are in some way suboptimal or are inherently self-contradictory, people may still hold them.
Calculations
Statistics that can be computed from a political spectrum and a set of candidates include:
References
- ↑ Refer to the Electowiki Point of View (EPOV)
- ↑ a b Davis, Otto A.; Hinich, Melvin J.; Ordeshook, Peter C. (1970-01-01). "An Expository Development of a Mathematical Model of the Electoral Process". The American Political Science Review. 64 (2): 426–448. doi:10.2307/1953842. JSTOR 1953842.
Since our model is multi-dimensional, we can incorporate all criteria which we normally associate with a citizen's voting decision process — issues, style, partisan identification, and the like.
- ↑ Stoetzer, Lukas F.; Zittlau, Steffen (2015-07-01). "Multidimensional Spatial Voting with Non-separable Preferences". Political Analysis. 23 (3): 415–428. doi:10.1093/pan/mpv013. ISSN 1047-1987.
The spatial model of voting is the work horse for theories and empirical models in many fields of political science research, such as the equilibrium analysis in mass elections ... the estimation of legislators’ ideal points ... and the study of voting behavior. ... Its generalization to the multidimensional policy space, the Weighted Euclidean Distance (WED) model ... forms the stable theoretical foundation upon which nearly all present variations, extensions, and applications of multidimensional spatial voting rest.
- ↑ If voter preferences have more than one peak along a dimension, it needs to be decomposed into multiple dimensions that each only have a single peak. "We can satisfy our assumption about the form of the loss function if we increase the dimensionality of the analysis — by decomposing one dimension into two or more"
- ↑ Tideman, T; Plassmann, Florenz (June 2008). "The Source of Election Results: An Empirical Analysis of Statistical Models of Voter Behavior".
Assume that voters care about the “attributes” of candidates. These attributes form a multi-dimensional “attribute space.”
Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ↑ Woon, Jonathan. "Introduction to spatial modeling" (PDF). University of Pittsburgh.
- ↑ Rabinowitz, George; Macdonald, Stuart Elaine (March 1989). "A directional theory of issue voting". American Political Science Review. 83 (1): 93–121. doi:10.2307/1956436. JSTOR 1956436.
- ↑ Milner, Helen (2004). "Partisanship, Trade Policy, and Globalization: Is There a Left–Right Divide on Trade Policy" (PDF). International Studies Quarterly. 48: 95–120. doi:10.1111/j.0020-8833.2004.00293.x.
- ↑ Knapp & Wright, p. 10.
- ↑ Adam Garfinkle, Telltale Hearts: The Origins and Impact of the Vietnam Antiwar Movement (1997). Palgrave Macmillan: p. 303.
- ↑ "Left (adjective)" and "Left (noun)" (2011), Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
- ↑ Roger Broad, Labour's European Dilemmas: From Bevin to Blair (2001). Palgrave Macmillan: p. xxvi.
- ↑ Most people are sensitive to the fairness foundation
- ↑ W:A Conflict of Visions
- ↑ "Book sources", Wikipedia, retrieved 2021-01-14
- ↑ Sowell, Thomas (1987). A conflict of visions (1st ed. ed.). New York: W. Morrow. ISBN 978-0-688-06912-4.CS1 maint: extra text (link)
- ↑ https://casnocha.com/2009/10/tragic-vs-utopian-view-of-human-nature.html
- ↑ Alós-Ferrer, Carlos; Granić, Đura-Georg (2015-09-01). "Political space representations with approval data". Electoral Studies. 39: 56–71. doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2015.04.003. hdl:1765/111247.
The analysis reveals that the underlying political landscapes ... are inherently multidimensional and cannot be reduced to a single left-right dimension, or even to a two-dimensional space. ... From this representation, lower-dimensional projections can be considered which help with the visualization of the political space as resulting from an aggregation of voters' preferences. ... Even though the method aims to obtain a representation with as few dimensions as possible, we still obtain representations with four dimensions or more.