The Political Compass

The political compass is a multi-axis political model used by the website of the same name to label or organise political thought on two dimensions.

The underlying theory of the political compass is that political ideology may be better measured along two separate and independent axes.

The economic (left–right) axis measures one’s opinion of how the economy should be run: “left” is defined as the desire for the economy to be run by a cooperative collective agency (which can mean the state, but can also mean a network of communes) while “right” is defined as the desire for the economy to be left to the devices of competing individuals and organizations.

The other axis (authoritarian–libertarian) measures one’s political opinions in a social sense, regarding the amount of personal freedom that one would allow: “libertarianism” is defined as the belief that personal freedom should be maximised while “authoritarianism” is defined as the belief that authority should be obeyed.

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YOUR TASK: Watch the video “The Political Compass – a brief intro”  and make brief notes on how the compass measures or classifies ideology. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u3UCz0TM5Q)