Political ideologies

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The quantifying of all political ideologies as falling somewhere in a "left-right" spectrum is generally misleading and appears to arise largely from a short-lived circumstance of seating in the French National Assembly in the 18th century^[1]. Other systems have been proposed, generally using two or more dimensions.

Political Spectra

• Nolan chart: [personal freedom] x [economic freedom]
• Pournelle chart: [belief in reason] x [belief in a State]

Related

• An Informal Opinion Poll Regarding Certain "Fundamental Questions" of Politics, Ideology and Human Destiny: certain of the questions in this poll suggest what may be fundamental dichotomies (or axes) in a multidimensional ideology-space

References

1. The Pournelle Political Axes (1986)

Brainstorming

What other dimensions might be significant in measuring political ideology?

• importance of studying doctrine ("doctrinality" or "doctrinaire") vs. observation and analysis (Rationalism) (Pournelle box only charts reason vs. irrationality - is "belief in an incorruptible doctrine" a form of irrationality? If so, is it the only form?)
• preference for superior-inferior (usually hierarchical) power relationships, as opposed to peer-peer (when applied to governance, this translates to authoritarianism (Authoritarianism) versus rule of the people)
  • perhaps this is a more-or-less logical corollary of "the toxicity of ideas" (see Brin questionnaire): (a) "I think ideas are inherently dangerous or toxic. People are easily deceived. An elite should guide or protect gullible masses toward correct thinking (Memic Frailty)" versus (b) "I believe children can be raised with a mixture of openness and skepticism to evaluate concepts on their own merits. Citizens can pluck useful bits wherever they may be found, even from bad images or ideologies (Memic Maturity)".
• belief that the human condition can be improved (however slowly) vs. the idea of a golden past to which we can only aspire to one day return (usually by following the rules laid out in some ancient doctrine; this tends to go together with doctrinality)
  • This can also be stated in terms of the nature of the propagation of wisdom (see Brin questionnaire): (a) "humans knew a natural idyllic condition at some point in the past, from which we fell because of bad, inappropriate or sinful choices, thus reducing our net wisdom. (The Look Back View)" versus (b) "Wisdom is cumulative and anything resembling a human utopia can only be achieved in the future, through incremental improvements in knowledge or merit. (The Look Forward View)".
• value of intuition vs. reasoning/analysis in arriving at understanding
• value of human understanding, regardless of how it is arrived at (nihilism would be assigning low value to this, implying that neither intuition nor reason has much value either)

Some issues which seem important but which may already be covered by the above:

• willingness to reopen discussion of existing solutions (as opposed to just solving new problems), in different arenas (e.g. social, as in marriage laws; infrastructure, as in power generation - liberals don't want to reconsider nuclear as an option, for example, but conservatives aren't willing to consider that marriage might be redesigned either) – can this be expressed as a combination of any of the others? It seems a bit overspecific to be a fundamental dimension...
• importance of observable facts versus pure reasoning (Continental rationalism)
• whether or not studies of (a) animal behavior (especially primates, dolphins, and other large-brained animals) and (b) behavior of tribal, non-mainstream cultures can be of benefit to understanding our own behavior. Related questions: Is human nature fixed, immutable? Is our understanding of it changeable, or have we learned pretty much everything we need to know about it?
• governmental style: "left-handed" (large projects explicitly coordinated and funded, e.g. pyramids, canals, wars, universities) versus "right-handed" (set up the rules and let individuals compete or cooperate out of enlightened self-interest, hopefully to the best benefit of society as a whole) (see Brin questionnaire)

Some sample uses of these axes:

• Mysticism: intuition important, observation unimportant ("Mysticism" can arguably be defined as the idea that intuition is always important and reasoning is always suspect; any better definitions out there?)