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The left–right political spectrum is a system of classifying political positions, ideologies and parties, with emphasis placed upon issues of social equality and social hierarchy. In addition to positions on the left and on the right, there are centrist and moderate positions, which are not strongly aligned with either end of the spectrum.
The claim that political positions can be located on a chart with two axes: left–right and tough–tender (authoritarian-libertarian) was put forward by the British psychologist Hans Eysenck in his 1954 book The Psychology of Politics with statistical evidence based on survey data. [1]
[7] [8] This form of politics has been criticized as tending to mischaracterize positions that have a logical location on a two-axis spectrum because they seem randomly brought together on a one-axis left–right spectrum. Some political scientists have noted that a single left–right axis is too simplistic and insufficient for describing the ...
Proponents of horseshoe theory argue that the far-left and the far-right are closer to each other than either is to the political center. In popular discourse, the horseshoe theory asserts that advocates of the far-left and the far-right, rather than being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear continuum of the political spectrum, closely resemble each other, analogous to the way that the ...
The Political Compass is a website soliciting responses to a set of 62 propositions in order to rate political ideology in a spectrum with two axes: one about economic policy (left–right) and another about social policy (authoritarian–libertarian).
The left–right paradigm is a concept from political sciences and anthropology which proposes that societies have a tendency to divide themselves into ideological opposites. Important contributions to the theory of the paradigm were made by British social anthropologist Rodney Needham , who saw it as a basic human classifying device.
Bobbio argues that the political terms left and right are meaningful and consistent. He dismisses arguments that late 20th-century movements often are hard to place on the left–right political spectrum, arguing that this mainly is something left-wingers say when they try to regain power after having lost momentum.
Political ideology in the United States is usually described with the left–right spectrum. Liberalism is the predominant left-leaning ideology and conservatism is the predominant right-leaning ideology. [96] [97] Those who hold beliefs between liberalism and conservatism or a mix of beliefs on this scale are called moderates.