2D Political Spectrum (Nolan Chart)

17 Dec 2003

      As part of a Mosaic new page:

ftp://furmint.nectar.cs.cmu.edu/security/cypheressay/what-is-cypherpunk.html

I put together a file on the 2D political spectrum.  This helps to
explain why Libertarians and the "Left wing" folks are both on this
list.

  -- Vince

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The two dimensional political spectrum was first developed by Nolan, so
it is usually called the "Nolan Chart".  A person gets a score on
economic issues and on personal issues.  This 2D plane is rotated 45
degrees so that "left" and "right" match with the old 1D spectrum.

                                .                                      
                              ./ \.                                            
                            ./  .  \.                                         
                          ./  .   .  \.                                        
                        ./  .   .   .  \.                                     
                      ./   LIBERTARIAN   \.
                    ./ \.   .   .   .   ./ \.
                  ./  .  \.___.___.___./  .  \.
                ./  .   . ! .   .   . ! .   .  \.
              ./  .   .   !   .   .   !   .   .  \.
            ./  .   .   . ! .   .   . ! .   .   .  \.
         100 \.  "LEFT"   !  MODERATE !  "RIGHT"  ./ 100
            90 \.   .   . ! .   .   . ! .   .   ./ 90
              80 \.   .   !___.___.___!   .   ./ 80
                70 \.   ./  .   .   .  \.   ./ 70
                  60 \./  .   .   .   .  \./ 60
 Personal Freedom   50 \. AUTHORITARIAN ./ 50    Economic Freedom
     Percentile       40 \.   .    .   / 40         Percentile
                        30 \.   .   ./ 30    
                          20 \.   ./ 20
                            10 \./ 10
                              0   0

Personal Freedom Issues (free or government controlled?):

    privacy, birth control, gambling, prostitution, homosexuality, drugs, 
    pornography, censorship (even anti-American stuff), military draft,
    control of radio or TV content (profanity, violence, ...), etc

Economic Freedom Issues (free or government controlled?):

    cable companies, taxi companies, licenses for businesses in general, 
    mail delivery, stock market, minimum wages, farm prices, prices in general,
    banks in general, airlines, car gas-mileage, nuclear power, oil prices, 
    money supply, current interest rate, maximum legal interest rate, 
    exports, imports, employee hiring and firing, etc

Common Agreement on Purpose of Government:

    All major groups on the political landscape agree that fraud and the 
    initiation of physical force are both bad and should be punished.  
    The con-man, fraud, swindler, or cheat, takes by trickery and 
    deception.  The "violent criminal" is someone who physically does 
    something to someone else or their property without permission, or 
    threatens to do so.  Everyone also agrees that a government should 
    defend the country against foreign invasion.

Issues that do not fit nicely into Nolan Chart:

    Sort of economic: welfare, death penalty, foreign aid
    Sort of personal: abortion, 

Calibration of 2D Political Spectrum:

    Someone should calibrate a set of questions that break down the 
    population by percentiles for the Nolan Chart.  This could be done 
    by someone like Gallup or maybe as a thesis project.  It would be very 
    interesting.  Fun to see scores for differed countries and also how
    a countries score varies over time.  If anyone knows of a large set
    of calibrated questions, please let me know.

   -- Vincent Cate
      vac@cs.cmu.edu

 This file is ftp://furmint.nectar.cs.cmu.edu/security/political-spectrum.txt

2D Political Spectrum (Nolan Chart)

Vincent.Cate＠FURMINT.NECTAR.CS.CMU.EDU