Phendrana Drifts

I love putting things in categories, ranking them, even filing them. So while many people say they despise the political spectrum and say things like the right-left politics are passe I still embrace it. But I also do believe that it is one-dimensional, and do tend to expand it into the second dimension of libertarian-authoritarian. So, thanks to the Political Compass Organization I am able to post where I sit on the two axes:

I actually feel pretty good about that - a bit more left than I would have guessed, but it feels like the right amount of libertarian vs. authoritarian. Now it would seem as easy as putting the Canadian political parties on the grid and finding the closest political party to my place. Fortunately the Political Compass Organization has plotted the Canadian political parties in 2005 on the grid. They have also plotted a few other countries' political personalities and parties. Let's compare:

Ok, I disagree with a lot of the placement. I even thought about not posting this, but then if I arbitrarily placed the political parties where I thought they should go then I wouldn't really be using this as a tool but more of a Rorschach ink blot test. So I left the parties where the Political Compass Organization put them. That said, I have three strong objections:

The NDP believe in more state involvement than the Canadian Conservatives or Liberals. I think making the NDP the hero of Canadian libertarians is incorrect. If I were making the grid, I would place them well north of the Liberals and Conservatives.

The British National Party is an extreme right wing party, not left. I don't know how they placed the almost fascist BNP, but left? Weird.

There is little to no evidence that the Canadian Conservatives are more "authoritarian" than the Canadian Liberals. While I would like to think that the CPC is more libertarian than the Liberals, I would concede there is a debate there over how strong a role the Conservatives see for the federal government in Canadian society. But substantially more than the Liberals? Demonstrably more than the NDP? I don't think so. I know the Liberals think that Stephen Harper is an authoritarian Prime Minister, but I think the compass isn't meant to measure whether you have regular press briefings but more focused on what the government does in your life on a daily basis.

Side thought, Obama is to the right of the Canadian Conservatives according to the Political Compass Organization. So is Gordon Brown's Labour party in the UK. Also, in fairness, I can't guarantee the Political Compass Organization ever meant for multiple countries to be correlated in this fashion, so I should put that caveat out.

Now it would seem that regardless of my thoughts on placing the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP, my vote should be clear. Prime Minister Gilles Duceppe. Except I don't think so. Sigh, back to the drawing board.

Labels: federal election, federal politics

2 Comments:

At 9:56 AM, Toby said…

I would say a lot of the parties have changed significantly since 2005. I do question the placement. If this is true the NDP is far too right-wing for me, and you and I should form some sort of libertarian party.

It would be quite fascinating to see candidates and party officials from the major parties take this test though.
At 12:50 PM, Morpheus said…

The facists are all the way up on the authoritarian axis, that's why. Remember how nazi stands for National Socialist? Same thing...

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