You have the “1D” political compass of left vs right, but those terms are so broad they can describe completely opposite viewpoints. Then there’s the “2D” political compass with authoritarian/libertarian and the classic left/right, but that is still quite broad and doesn’t fit every ideology and belief well. If someone were to create a fully fleshed out N-dimensional political compass that could accurately summarise generalise to a reasonable degree of accuracy* a person’s political perspective, how many axes are needed, and what would they be?
Of the top of my head, I can think of a few:
- authoritarian vs anti-authoritarian (on the extremes, you would have dictator bootlickers who support a one-rules-all style system and anarchists advocating for no authority at all)
- internationalism vs nationalism
- egalitarianism vs traditionalism (social equality vs hierarchal society)
- environmentalist vs anti-environmentalist (every policy must consider environmental impacts vs cLiMaTe ChAnGe Is A hOaX)
- progressive vs conservative (or pro-change vs anti-change)
- intellectualism vs anti-intellectualism (pro-science vs anti-science)
- free vs regulated economy (on the extremes, no government influence of the economy at all and a state-run economy)
Please don’t treat this as an argument over why your politics are better! Debating politics is the worst kind of internet argument one can consume themselves into…
Also, please note that this post is not intended to attack anyone with the above viewpoints. Just want to make that clear.


What an opportunity for some computer 3d design. Imagine a D20 from tabletop gaming representing the outbounds of 100% of 20 particular socio-political traits. Then radiating from the centrepoint to the edge, a polygone begins to form within the D20. Colour coding facets makes visualization simple.
I’ll stick with 2d and my crayons. The blue ones tastes nice.