↔ Learn · Spectrum
"Left" and "right" began as seats in a room in 1789. Today they are shorthand for bundles of ideas that don't always travel together — which is why political scientists usually use at least two axes.
1789
In the French National Assembly of 1789, deputies who supported the king and the old order gathered to the right of the presiding officer; those who wanted radical change sat to the left. The labels stuck. Through the 19th century "left" came to mean the side of change, equality and popular sovereignty, and "right" the side of order, tradition and hierarchy.
The content of each side has shifted. In the 19th century, free-market liberals were often the left against monarchists and the Church; by the 20th, the left meant socialism and the welfare state, and many free-marketeers had moved right. What counts as left or right still differs between countries: "liberal" means centre-left in the United States and free-market centre-right in much of Europe and Australia.
Two dimensions
How much should government own, tax, redistribute and regulate? The economic left favours a larger role for the state; the economic right favours markets, private property and lower taxes.
Questions of identity, morality and authority — immigration, crime, national sovereignty, personal freedoms. The Chapel Hill Expert Survey calls the poles GAL (green, alternative, libertarian) and TAN (traditional, authoritarian, nationalist).
The two axes don't always line up. A party can favour redistribution and also restrictive immigration, or free markets and liberal social policy. Since the 1970s, researchers have found the cultural axis becoming more important to how people vote in many democracies. Two axes are still a simplification: foreign policy, religion, region, language or the environment can cut across both.
Try it · Where do you sit?
A simplified teaching tool, not a scientific survey: twelve statements can't capture anyone's views, and positions shift between countries and decades. Half the statements on each axis point each way, so agreeing with everything puts you at the centre. Your answers are scored in your browser — nothing is stored or sent.
Answer a statement to see your position.
0 of 12 answered
Traditions
Described historically and in their own terms. Placements are approximate and contested — these are families of ideas, not single positions.
Explore · Ideologies on two axes
Shapes show a rough centre and spread, not a fixed point: each tradition has varied widely across countries and eras. Pick one to read about it.
Marx & Engels, 1848; ruling parties from 1917
Aims at a classless society with common ownership of the means of production. Marxist–Leninist states (the USSR from 1917, China from 1949) ran one-party systems with central planning — hence the authoritarian placement, although the theory's end goal is a stateless society.
Source ↗19th-century labour movements onward
Seeks social or public ownership of major industries and a far more equal distribution of wealth, pursued through elections rather than revolution.
Party family · Manifesto code 20
Socialist & other left: Die Linke (Germany), La France insoumise, Japanese Communist Party
Late 19th century; post-1945 welfare states
Accepts a market economy but regulates it and funds a broad welfare state — universal healthcare, pensions, strong labour rights — to reduce inequality.
Party family · Manifesto code 30
Social democratic: SPD (Germany), Labour (UK), Australian Labor Party, Parti socialiste (France)
1970s environmental and peace movements
Puts ecological sustainability first, usually alongside grassroots democracy, social justice and non-violence. Green parties entered parliaments from the 1980s (Germany, 1983).
Party family · Manifesto code 10
Ecologist / Green: Alliance 90/The Greens (Germany), Australian Greens, Les Écologistes (France)
Late 19th–20th century
Liberalism that sees poverty, ill health and lack of education as limits on freedom, so supports public services and regulation alongside civil liberties.
Source ↗17th–19th century (Locke, Smith, Mill)
Individual liberty, the rule of law, limited government, private property and free markets and trade. The root of both modern liberal and much modern conservative thought.
Party family · Manifesto code 40
Liberal: FDP (Germany), Liberal Democrats (UK), Liberal Party of Canada
20th century (Hayek, Nozick, Rothbard)
Pushes liberal principles furthest: a minimal state limited to protecting rights and contracts, with few restrictions on either economic or personal choices.
Source ↗Late 19th century; dominant in post-1945 Western Europe
Draws on Christian, especially Catholic, social teaching: a social market economy, the family and community as building blocks, and moderate cultural conservatism.
Party family · Manifesto code 50
Christian democratic: CDU/CSU (Germany)
Edmund Burke, 1790, in reaction to the French Revolution
Values continuity, tradition and established institutions, preferring gradual change to radical reform. Modern conservative parties usually also favour markets and lower taxes.
Party family · Manifesto code 60
Conservative: Conservative Party (UK), Conservative Party of Canada, Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), Liberal Party of Australia
Nationalism from the 18th century; radical-right populism since the 1980s
Nationalism holds that the nation should be self-governing and its identity protected. Today's national-populist parties combine it with opposition to immigration and to elites; their economic positions vary widely.
Party family · Manifesto code 70
Nationalist / radical right: Alternative for Germany (AfD), Rassemblement national (France)
Italy 1922–43; Nazi Germany 1933–45
Ultranationalist and dictatorial: one party, a cult of the leader, suppression of opposition and of independent unions, and a state-directed (corporatist) economy that kept private ownership.
Source ↗Many scholars treat populism as a "thin" ideology rather than a place on the map: the claim that politics should express the will of a virtuous "people" against a corrupt "elite". It attaches to hosts on either side — left-wing populism (with socialist economics) or right-wing populism (with nationalism) — so it isn't plotted as one point.
Comparing parties
To compare parties across countries, researchers group them into families by history and programme. These are the families used by the Manifesto Project (ParlGov's are very similar). Examples are illustrative; many big parties, such as the US Democrats and Republicans or India's BJP and Congress, are broad coalitions that don't sit neatly in one family.
Alliance 90/The Greens (Germany) · Australian Greens · Les Écologistes (France)
Die Linke (Germany) · La France insoumise · Japanese Communist Party
SPD (Germany) · Labour (UK) · Australian Labor Party · Parti socialiste (France)
FDP (Germany) · Liberal Democrats (UK) · Liberal Party of Canada
CDU/CSU (Germany)
Conservative Party (UK) · Conservative Party of Canada · Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) · Liberal Party of Australia
Alternative for Germany (AfD) · Rassemblement national (France)
National Party of Australia (rural, agrarian roots)
Scottish National Party (UK) · Bloc Québécois (Canada) · DMK (Tamil Nadu, India)
How many parties?
A party system is the pattern of competition between parties: how many matter, how far apart they are, and how often power changes hands.
Only one party may hold power; others are banned or exist only as allies of the ruling party.
China, Vietnam, Cuba today; the Soviet Union 1922–91.
Elections are competitive, but one party wins again and again for decades.
Japan's LDP (almost continuously since 1955); India's Congress (1952–77); South Africa's ANC (majority 1994–2024); Mexico's PRI (1929–2000, with limited competition).
Two parties alternate in power and between them hold nearly every seat.
The United States: Democrats and Republicans.
Two big parties plus a smaller third that often decides who governs.
West Germany before the 1980s (CDU/CSU, SPD and the FDP as kingmaker); the UK, with the Liberal Democrats.
Three to five relevant parties, close enough ideologically to form coalitions.
Germany today; the Nordic countries.
Many parties, including strong anti-system ones at both ends, so the centre governs under pressure (Sartori).
Weimar Germany; Italy's First Republic (1948–94).
The French political scientist Maurice Duverger argued in the 1950s that plurality voting in single-member districts (first-past-the-post) tends to produce two-party systems, while proportional representation tends to produce many parties. Two forces drive it: the system under-rewards third parties with seats (the mechanical effect), and voters and donors desert parties they expect to lose (the psychological effect).
It is a tendency, not a law of nature. It works mainly within each district: the UK, Canada and India all use first-past-the-post yet elect many parties, because regional parties can win their own districts. See how the rules shape outcomes on electoral systems.
Try it · Effective number of parties
Counting every party treats a one-seat party like a governing one. Laakso and Taagepera (1979) weight each party by its share instead: N = 1 / Σ pᵢ². Two equal parties give 2; one dominant party and a few small ones give a number close to 1. Load a real chamber, then drag the seats.
—effective parties