Nolan Chart

In my last post I had a funny looking new chart of political ideologys--Called the Nolan Chart.  This is it's story... The traditional ideology map looks like this:

It's very straightforward: one-dimensional, flat, and very poorly defined. Just what does left mean? What does right mean? It's extremely common to hear a number of different definitions. Among more historical or political circles left is considered socialistic or redistributive, even if in very modest or moderate ways, and the right is considered non- or anti-socialistic. Others consider the left in a more social sense as the side accepting of minorities, women's rights, gay issues, abortion and so forth while the right is somewhat against those. Another (extremely problematic) measure is that the right is for the status quo, tradition or the past and the left is for progress and the future. Unfortunately, this is meaningless since the American Founders would have been considered under this standard 'left' in 1776 America, 'right' in 21st century America, and left in the 1980s Soviet Union. Politics cannot be reduced to past versus future, especially since that would make supporting abortion rights in America conservative, as they are part of the past. Whether it's economics, social change or some chronological scale, none of these charts is especially well defined or standardized. We all sort of have an impression that certain people belong on the left or the right, but this measure is spotty under any duress.

Where would you place someone who wanted to legalize all drugs? Normalize gay relationships? Most people would consider this left. Where would you place someone that wanted to end welfare and repeal the minimum wage? Really conservative, right? What if the same person held all of these positions; is there such a thing as a centrist who opposes the existence of public welfare, minimum wage laws, and drug control laws? That's not exactly a moderate.

The answer is obvious: the failure lies in the test. It cannot test someone accurately who holds these extreme yet seemingly contradictory opinions. The answer is to separate out economic and social opinions and try to map out ideology more accurately. This was done effectively by David Nolan (the Libertarian Party was founded in his home in Colorado) when he created the World's Smallest Political Quiz.

Economic and social politics split along two different axes. Believing in less government intervention on social issues moves one to the upper left and the opposite view of social issues moves one to the lower-right. Supporting greater economic intervention moves to the lower left and the opposite is toward the upper right. The quiz makes quite a bit of sense once you actually take it, so I recommend to anyone curious about the subject.

The World's Smallest Political Quiz is only ten questions. Quiz2D is a more involved and specific test. Both are run by admitted libertarians with open interests in persuading people to that cause, but the tests themselves are still quite accurate.

This chart is valuable because it gives a place for libertarians and authoritarians and degrees of left and right. We know that somebody who advocates moving back government across the board, including drug legalization and other social issues, is not simply an ultra-conservative but a libertarian, something that's substantively different than a conservative. If somebody wants to ban marijuana, ban deviant sex, ban cigarettes and alcohol, confiscate all private firearms, establish national health care, ban large corporate executive salaries, nationalize industries and mandate full employment then we know that person is an authoritarian.

The test is certainly imperfect. Foreign policy theoretically falls along the social axis but this is unwieldy and has a tendency to confuse some results. Questions such as gun control do not accurately place Republicans on the right and Democrats on the left; opposing gun control is a social freedom and thus the upper left. Beyond a few problems, the test is still very useful in distinguishing and identifying the basic standpoint of a given political perspective.

Take the test (or tests) to find out where you are, and I will post the results from my test later on.  Have Fun!