As a follow up to my last post, I thought I'd mention the Political Compass. It's a fascinating methodology that seeks to explore political values on two dimensions rather than the traditional Left-Right dimension. The traditional dimension is still there - on the horizontal axis - but the test developed at the Political Compass also plots your political values on a second, social dimension in relation to Authoritarian-Libertarian values.The test takes a few minutes - and there are no 'don't know/neither/nor' options in the answers (which means it might take you longer). The chart shows the plot of my answers: I thought I might have been further down the Libertarian axis but there you go - a sign of conservative old age I guess!
They even have a handy chart plotting the main Irish political parties - dated from 2007. Hence the PDs are still on the map
, so to speak. Mind you, by the time of their demise I would have put them rather more to the north of Fianna Fail.The origins of the Political Compass are not very clear, and there are similar maps in use. But it's an interesting one nevertheless. I expect that by the time of the next election most parties will have moved considerably more towards the top left hand box.
NAMA and all that ...
Interesting post. In Holland there is a website which has a thing called the stemwijzer (vote indicator). Before an election people select a list of options that reflect their views and this is mapped to a political party. You would not believe how many people use it to decide how to vote. I can never get over it, it is the single biggest factor in determining my work colleagues' choice of party (and they don't even think about how their parents or grandparents voted ;-).
ReplyDelete