Political ideologies: the political spectrum - Politics in Minutes (2016)

Politics in Minutes (2016)

Political ideologies: the political spectrum

The classification of political ideologies as either left- or right-wing, or at least as being at some point on a scale that ranges from communism at one end and fascism at the other, is, of course, an oversimplification. The criteria for determining a place on the political spectrum are both economic and social, and a political movement may be socially conservative and economically progressive, or vice versa.

Another factor that should perhaps be taken into account is the degree to which a political party dictates and interferes in the activities of the people - how authoritarian or libertarian it is. In the modern world, liberal democracies of one kind or another are the norm, with some form of social welfare, as well as a more or less laissez-faire attitude to free-market capitalism, and the predominant political ideologies are clustered around the centre of the left-right scale. The differences between them can be more clearly seen if each aspect of their policies is examined separately.

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