Political Values
Map your politics on five axes and find your ideology
Free, no account needed.
Left and right are only the beginning. This test places you on five independent axes: how the economy should be organised, how much power the state should hold, how you weigh social change against tradition, whether you look first to the world or to the nation, and how you balance growth against the natural world. Your profile is then compared with thirty-two ideologies.
Answer according to what you believe is right, not what seems realistic or popular. There is no correct position: every view on this map has thoughtful defenders and serious critics. If you have no opinion on a statement, choose the middle.
What it measures
Economics
Equality ↔ Markets
How the economy should be organised: collective provision, redistribution and public ownership, or free enterprise, private property and low taxes.
Equality: You want wealth shared more equally, essential services held in common and markets kept on a short leash.
Markets: You trust free enterprise, competition and private property to create prosperity, and want taxes and regulation kept low.
State
Liberty ↔ Authority
How much power the state should hold over citizens: civil liberties, privacy and dispersed power, or order, security and strong leadership.
Liberty: You guard civil liberties, privacy and the right to dissent, and you want power spread out and held to account.
Authority: You value order, security and decisive government, and accept limits on individual freedom to achieve them.
Society
Progress ↔ Tradition
How you weigh social change against inherited customs, faith and moral norms in questions of family, sexuality, religion and culture.
Progress: You welcome social change, question inherited customs and want people free to live as they choose.
Tradition: You value continuity, religious and moral traditions and the wisdom of established ways of life.
Diplomacy
Global ↔ National
Whether you look first to international cooperation, shared institutions and open borders, or to national sovereignty, independence and self-reliance.
Global: You see yourself as part of one human community and favour international law, open borders and pooled sovereignty.
National: You put your own nation first and want it to keep control of its laws, borders and alliances.
Ecology
Growth ↔ Ecology
How you balance industry, growth and the use of natural resources against protecting nature and living within ecological limits.
Growth: You put economic growth, development and human ingenuity first, and trust technology to handle environmental problems.
Ecology: You want nature protected for its own sake and are willing to accept costs and lower consumption to do it.
Possible results
Anarcho-CommunismNo masters, no money: a world held in common by free people.
Libertarian SocialismWorkplaces run by workers, towns run by neighbours.
Eco-SocialismAn economy planned for need, within the limits of a living planet.
Marxism-LeninismA vanguard party, a planned economy, the promise of a classless future.
Democratic SocialismEconomic democracy, won at the ballot box.
Left-Wing PopulismThe many against the powerful few.
Green PoliticsEcological wisdom, social justice, grassroots democracy and peace.
ProgressivismSociety can be made fairer, and each generation should push it further.
Social DemocracyA market economy with a strong, shared safety net.
Social LiberalismFreedom is real only when everyone has the means to use it.
Third WayMarkets and social justice, renewed for a global economy.
Cosmopolitan FederalismOne humanity, governing itself together across borders.
GeorgismThe earth belongs to everyone; what you make belongs to you.
CentrismPragmatism over ideology: take good ideas wherever you find them.
TechnocracyLet evidence govern, and let experts hold the wheel.
CommunitarianismRights come with responsibilities, and no one flourishes alone.
NeoliberalismOpen markets, sound money and a world joined by trade.
Classical LiberalismLife, liberty and property, guarded by law and limited government.
Minarchist LibertarianismA night-watchman state, and freedom for everything else.
Anarcho-CapitalismEvery service, even law and defence, offered on a free market.
Libertarian ConservatismFree markets, modest government and the virtues that sustain freedom.
Christian DemocracyThe dignity of the person, the solidarity of the community.
Liberal ConservatismFree markets and free people, anchored in trusted institutions.
Traditional ConservatismSociety as a partnership of the dead, the living and the unborn.
Green ConservatismTo conserve the land is to conserve ourselves.
DistributismNeither capitalism nor socialism: property for the many.
National ConservatismA nation is a home, and a home must be kept.
Right-Wing PopulismOrdinary people against a distant establishment.
Economic NationalismBuild at home, protect what you build, stand on your own feet.
Traditionalist MonarchismA crown above parties, a sacred order above fashion.
Theocratic ConservatismLaw and public life rooted in sacred tradition.
Authoritarian NationalismUnity, order and national strength, at the price of freedom.
About this test
The words left and right date from 1789, when supporters of the king sat on the right of the French National Assembly and his opponents on the left. A single line soon proved too crude. In 1954 the psychologist Hans Eysenck proposed two axes, radical versus conservative and tough- versus tender-minded; in 1969 David Nolan drew a chart separating economic from personal freedom; and many online tests since have added further axes. Political psychology broadly supports the idea that economic and cultural attitudes are distinct dimensions, and research on post-materialist values, begun by Ronald Inglehart, helps explain why environmental concern cuts across the older divisions.
This test uses five axes: economics (equality versus markets), the state (liberty versus authority), society (progress versus tradition), diplomacy (global versus national) and ecology (growth versus ecology). Each is measured by about fourteen original statements and dilemmas keyed in both directions. Your score on an axis is the position of your answers between the most extreme answers possible, so 50 means balanced, not average. Every ideology has an estimated position on all five axes, and your result is the one closest to you.
Treat the result as a starting point. The positions are informed approximations of broad families that contain many internal disagreements, the meaning of left and right differs between countries, and a questionnaire cannot capture the reasons behind your views. A central result can mean moderate views or strongly mixed ones. Every ideology is described as its thoughtful supporters would recognise it, followed by its main criticisms; none is presented as the right answer.
References
- Eysenck, H. J. (1954). The Psychology of Politics.
- Inglehart, R. (1977). The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics.
- Freeden, M. (1996). Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach.
- Feldman, S. & Johnston, C. (2014). Understanding the determinants of political ideology: Implications of structural complexity. Political Psychology, 35(3), 337-358.
- Heywood, A. (2021). Political Ideologies: An Introduction (7th ed.).
- Mudde, C. & Rovira Kaltwasser, C. (2017). Populism: A Very Short Introduction.
For self-reflection and curiosity, not diagnosis. Scores describe how you answered, relative to the possible range; they are not compared with population norms.
All questions, type names and descriptions were written for this suite. Where a test is inspired by a branded instrument (the MBTI®, the five love languages®, DISC assessments, the Political Compass), it is an independent test of the same idea and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the owners of those names.
Political Values
About 10 minutes · 71 questions
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