More on That New, Improved Political Spectrum Map
What do the actual numbers say about my little idea?
A few weeks back, I wrote a post suggesting a new two-axis political spectrum chart to replace one that I don’t much care for. The idea was to create a model that:
- Was based on underlying values rather than specific positions and therefore universal
- Doesn’t include loaded terms of the kind used solely to characterize one’s political opponents, particularly authoritarianism
I settled on a system using two of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, namely power distance (added as the egalitarianism-hierarchical axis) and individualism (added as the self-focus/group-focus axis). It fit my two requirements, but it was still speculative as I don’t have the means to do mass surveys.
Herein lies the advantage of using Hofstede’s model: I have his numbers.
Those numbers aren’t for individuals, mind, but for countries. While that’s less than ideal for my purposes, it does at least give me a means to do a little analysis and figure out if this chart is feasible.
To begin, I plotted out points for a collection of countries. I began with the world’s highest GDP countries, then added countries with high GDPs relative to their regions to give…
