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Political Philosophy

A Map of Political Ideas

Phil Badger draws the boundaries of political thought and explores the territories.

There are many ways to classify political ideologies and map out the boundaries between them. I cordially invite you to consider mine. Although my examples are drawn mainly from the United Kingdom’s political history, I think it is broad enough and subtle enough to describe the ideological landscape of most Western secular countries, and to help clarify the nature of many of the disagreements in recent political life. So consider this chart. Its four quarters could be respectively called ‘hierarchical-communitarian’ (top right), ‘egalitarian-communitarian’ (top left), ‘hierarchical-liberal’ (bottom right) and ‘egalitarian-liberal’ (bottom left).

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