Political compasses

I read Tyson Yunkaporta's "Write Story / Wrong Story" over Easter. At one stage he talks about compulsively filling in the ABC Political Compass to see whether he comes up with anything other than the bottom left-hand corner, and not feeling that the labels are adequate.

I've always felt these "compasses" aren't quite right, but Tyson made me think a little more. I reckon the problem here is not so much the assumptions built in to where each "issue" fits in the compass (though this is a limitation of the model), but more fundamental: the idea that all human conflict over who has power and how we should govern ourselves can be summarised by two dualisms set at right angles: "Left vs Right" - an incredibly vague opposition - and "authoritarian vs libertarian".

We could map out various positions on any number of equally valid "dualistic dualisms".

Political Compasses