A Map of Political Ideas

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

- By Phil Badger and Terence Green. Photographs by Harley Schwadron and Chris Gill

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). Strange terms perhaps; but as we shall see, together these divisions enable us to delineate the major political positions taken in today’s world. So let’s look at these four positions, and the relationships between them.

Traditional Conservatism

The ‘hierarchical-communitarian’ slot in the top right corner is where traditional conservative thinkers live. For them, the central concern of politics is what is sometimes called ‘The Problem of Order’, and we can have considerable sympathy with these concerns. Traditional conservatives ask how societies are meant to maintain cohesion and social peace in the face of the dizzying pace of social change. This question is hardly new – Aristotle asked it – but since the Industrial Revolution it has become increasingly insistent. In our own era, racked as it is by concerns about mass migration and technological disruption, climate change, war and waves of pandemics, the question of how some semblance of social continuity is to be maintained is particularly acute.