Reference library

Everything you can be matched against

Each entry below carries a twelve-value vector, published here so you can check the comparison rather than take it on trust. Bars run left pole to right pole in this order: power, democracy, economy, welfare, sovereignty, force, culture, religion, ecology, technology, structure, rights.

Ideologies (31)

Classical Liberalism

Liberal

Constitutional limits on state power, open markets, and rights that no majority may remove.

Social Liberalism

Liberal

A market economy tempered by strong public services and firm protection for minorities.

Social Democracy

Socialist

Capitalism kept but steered: universal welfare, strong unions and international cooperation.

Democratic Socialism

Socialist

Social ownership of the commanding heights, pursued through elections rather than revolution.

Revolutionary Socialism

Socialist

The existing order cannot be reformed from within and has to be replaced outright.

Eco-Socialism

Green

Ecological limits and social ownership treated as a single problem.

Anarcho-Communism

Anarchist

Abolition of state and market alike, with production held in common.

Mutualism

Anarchist

Cooperative exchange and free credit, without landlords, employers or a central state.

Anarcho-Syndicalism

Anarchist

Workers' unions rather than parties or parliaments as the engine of social change.

Anarcho-Capitalism

Libertarian

Every service, including law and defence, provided through voluntary exchange.

Minarchism

Libertarian

A state reduced to courts, police and defence, and to nothing else.

Classical Conservatism

Conservative

Inherited institutions, natural hierarchy and gradual change in place of rational redesign.

One-Nation Conservatism

Conservative

Social obligation and national unity used to soften the edge of the market.

National Conservatism

Nationalist

National culture and sovereignty first, with markets serving the nation rather than the reverse.

Christian Democracy

Religious

A market economy organised around family, congregation and subsidiarity.

Distributism

Religious

Property spread as widely as possible, so that many own rather than a few.

Corporatism

Nationalist

Society organised into vocational bodies that bargain under state supervision.

Liberal Internationalism

Liberal

Open economies, international law and collective security as the basis of order.

Realist Nationalism

Nationalist

States pursue their interests; institutions and ideals are instruments, not restraints.

Isolationism

Nationalist

Trade where it pays, entanglements never: other people's quarrels are not ours.

Technocracy

Technocratic

Government by demonstrated competence, with policy insulated from electoral mood.

Progressivism

Radical

Reform aimed at dismantling inherited hierarchy and widening the circle of rights.

Radical Republicanism

Radical

Popular sovereignty and civic virtue set against monarchy, privilege and clerical power.

Reactionism

Traditionalist

The modern settlement should be reversed rather than merely moderated.

Constitutional Monarchism

Traditionalist

An inherited head of state above faction, with power exercised by elected ministers.

Federalism

Radical

Power divided between nested communities, each sovereign in its own sphere.

Agrarianism

Traditionalist

The land, the family holding and the small community as the moral centre of the nation.

Georgism

Liberal

Tax the value of land, and leave the rest of production alone.

Green Conservatism

Green

Stewardship of the land as a duty owed to those who come after.

Accelerationism

Technocratic

Technology should be pushed forward faster than politics can object.

Technological Precautionism

Technocratic

Capability should wait for consent, testing and control.

Civic traditions (28)

These are modelled constitutional and civic traditions, not measurements of how a country votes and not statements about its people.

Switzerland

Confederal government, direct democracy and armed neutrality.

Norway

A resource economy with deep welfare floors and firm constitutional review.

Denmark

Flexible labour markets paired with generous universal provision.

Sweden

High-tax universalism, export industry and a long tradition of open government.

Finland

Consensus politics, comprehensive schooling and total-defence preparedness.

Iceland

Small-scale direct democracy with an unusually strong egalitarian streak.

Netherlands

Consociational compromise, free trade and a long liberal-constitutional inheritance.

Belgium

Power devolved along linguistic lines beneath a constitutional monarchy.

Germany

Ordoliberal markets, federal structure and a constitution written against catastrophe.

Austria

Neutrality, consensual economics and a corporatist bargaining tradition.

France

A centralised republican state, technocratic elites and a strong tradition of protest.

Ireland

Liberal economy, religious inheritance and a written constitution with judicial review.

Italy

Fragmented but resilient pluralism, family networks and a large welfare state.

Spain

Regional autonomy inside a constitutional monarchy.

Portugal

A recent democracy with a strong social compact and Atlantic instincts.

Poland

Sovereignty and religious identity foregrounded after a long imperial history.

Hungary

National conservatism with centralised government and a guarded view of outside institutions.

Greece

Ancient civic inheritance, Orthodox identity and a turbulent party tradition.

Estonia

Digital-first administration, flat taxes and a flatly defensive posture toward its neighbour.

Canada

Federalism, immigration as nation-building and a charter of entrenched rights.

United States

Market primacy, entrenched constitutional rights and a federal structure with global reach.

Mexico

A centralising presidential tradition alongside strong regional and religious life.

Brazil

Continental federalism with heavy state involvement and a powerful legislature.

Argentina

A large state, a strong labour tradition and recurring conflict over economic direction.

Chile

Market reform now tempered by a constituent process and broader social guarantees.

Uruguay

Secularism, state ownership of key sectors and a long record of stable pluralism.

Australia

Compulsory voting, resource exports and a settler-democracy inheritance.

New Zealand

Small-state pragmatism, treaty politics and one of the earliest universal franchises.

Historical figures (53)

Drawn from antiquity to the mid-twentieth century. Each vector is a reading of recorded positions, not an endorsement, and nobody currently in office appears here.

Pericles

Athenian statesman who widened popular participation while holding an empire together.

Plato

Rule by those who know, and open suspicion of the judgement of crowds.

Aristotle

Constitutional balance, natural hierarchy and virtue as the aim of political life.

Cicero

Republican order, a mixed constitution and duty owed to the commonwealth.

Marcus Aurelius

Imperial power exercised, however imperfectly, under Stoic self-restraint.

Niccolò Machiavelli

Republican virtue for citizens and unsparing realism for princes.

Thomas More

A Christian humanist commonwealth built on conscience before royal convenience.

Jean Bodin

The first systematic defence of undivided sovereign authority.

Thomas Hobbes

Order purchased by an absolute sovereign, without whom life is solitary and short.

John Locke

Natural rights, government by consent and a right of resistance.

Montesquieu

Separation of powers and moderation as the proper aim of constitutional design.

Voltaire

Free expression, secular authority and contempt for established superstition.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The general will as the only legitimate sovereign, unmediated by faction.

Adam Smith

Markets understood as a system of cooperation, with moral sentiment beneath the calculus.

Edmund Burke

Reform in order to preserve: a contract between the dead, the living and the unborn.

Thomas Paine

Rights of man, republican government and an unsparing case against inherited rule.

Alexander Hamilton

A strong federal state, a national bank and deliberate industrial ambition.

Thomas Jefferson

Agrarian liberty, strict limits on central power and grandiloquent declarations of rights.

James Madison

Faction balanced against faction, with rights entrenched above passing majorities.

Mary Wollstonecraft

Reason and education as the basis of equal civil standing.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Equality and liberty held together by local association rather than central power.

Jeremy Bentham

Legislation measured by measurable welfare rather than inherited doctrine.

John Stuart Mill

Individual experiment, free discussion and the harm principle.

Richard Cobden

Free trade pursued as the practical route to peace between nations.

Benjamin Disraeli

One-nation conservatism: social obligation and the defence of inherited institutions.

William Gladstone

Liberal reform driven by moral conviction rather than administrative convenience.

Klemens von Metternich

Balance of power and the suppression of revolution erected into a system of government.

Otto von Bismarck

Blood and iron abroad, pioneering welfare legislation at home.

Abraham Lincoln

Union preserved and slavery abolished, through the broadest reading of emergency power.

Giuseppe Mazzini

The nation as the instrument of a moral and republican awakening.

Karl Marx

Class conflict as the motive force of history, and the state as an instrument of it.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Property as theft when it collects rent; order built from free association.

Mikhail Bakunin

Root-and-branch opposition to state authority in every form it takes.

Peter Kropotkin

Mutual aid as a natural fact, and communism as its political conclusion.

Eduard Bernstein

Socialism through steady reform, and a frank break with revolutionary inevitability.

Rosa Luxemburg

Mass action and revolutionary democracy against both capital and bureaucracy.

Emma Goldman

Anarchism as the right to live without masters of any kind.

Eugene V. Debs

Industrial unionism and socialism advanced through the ballot box.

Woodrow Wilson

Self-determination at home and collective security abroad.

Theodore Roosevelt

Progressive reform, national conservation and a great power's confidence.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The state as employer and insurer of last resort in a national emergency.

Winston Churchill

The case for standing firm, and for the constitutional order that made it possible.

Charles de Gaulle

National grandeur, executive authority and independence from every bloc.

Clement Attlee

A quiet radical: public ownership, universal health care and imperial withdrawal.

Konrad Adenauer

Western integration, federalism and a market economy with social obligations.

G. K. Chesterton

Distributism, local loyalty and a cheerful suspicion of large institutions.

Maximilien Robespierre

Revolutionary virtue that tolerated no dissent and feared no terror.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Enlightened administration delivered by disciplined autocracy.

Oliver Cromwell

Providential rule that replaced a crown with a sword.

W. E. B. Du Bois

Rights and education pursued in a global rather than a merely national frame.

Jane Addams

Social work, suffrage and pacifism treated as one continuous project.

John Maynard Keynes

Managed capitalism: the state as stabiliser rather than owner.

Friedrich Hayek

Dispersed knowledge, spontaneous order and the road that leads from planning to serfdom.

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