This is a great deep dive into the concept of left and right being multi dimensional axes of political orientation: authoritarian versus libertarian and economic leftism that seeks redistribution versus economic rightism that opposes it. I think maybe it should not be called libertarian but liberal. Libertarian implies a belief in minimal government but liberalism implies a government that does not impose on people but it doesn’t necessarily imply a minimal government. I’m definitely going to read that author who writes about the nature of shifting political alliances! Thanks for this great post! Also I think that writer is named Richard not Norman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKelvey–Schofield_chaos_theorem
Thanks a lot Ken for your feedback. I agree the libertarian/authoritarian and left/right labels are not the best. And you are right about McKelyvey, I corrected it!
The description of the voting coalitions is about right, but the claim that conflict over income distribution has ceased to be a defining feature is wrong. The most extreme example is the Republican tax bill, but the same division is evident in Australia with the fights over the Stage 3 tax cuts and the taxation of super
One fact that has surprised many observers is that as high education high income voters have shifted to left parties, they have also shifted left on economic issues, while the reverse has happened on the right, particularly in the US.
I stopped reading this when I saw the graph on American politicians and they were all clustered in the top right except Sanders. Even Clinton was hanging around those parts.
I don’t know if this is propaganda or comedy, but if it’s the latter, it needed to get much funnier much faster.
The placement of these dots reflects the choice of scaling of the Political Compass. I agree it is skewed.A good choice would have the dots centred around the origin.
I wrote this in response to Dan Williams' calls for intuitions on the subject of an upcoming piece he is writing: the hesitance to criticize science on account of its potential to be politically weaponized. I thought it relevant to share here:
"This sort of “barbarians at the gates” motif is not new with the introduction of the Trumpian hordes. While it might be more defensible now (in that the threat is backed by material leverage), it would be convenient to ignore the now longstanding narrative of “lest pseudoscience gain ground.”
The broader pattern seems to be that if you take flat earthers and conspiracy theorists seriously (good faith engagement), they tend to readily admit that the distrust is the point, not the hyperspecific narratives that set falsifying and Bayesian brains alight.
I think the case to be made, fusing insights from your and Page's most recent articles, would be a cycle such as:
For example, the debate over evolution in the classroom galvanized leftward science communities, was popularized by, among others, the New Atheists appealing to a “common sense” notion of “religion bad mmmkay.” This and other dismissive dispositions were then commoditized in the cultural production of the “symbolic capitalists” (Al-Gharbi), and then gentrified as an odd mix of ritualized and “access economy” motifs in a gold rush for new leftist currencies (publish or perish, the performative chivalry of woke purity tests, etc.).
Meanwhile, the right was bifurcating under the radar as the elites of the Right couldn't be bothered with the material interests of their constituency, and while the leftist elites stereotyped and vilified the more dispositionally salient “rednecks” (~poor whites) on radio waves and late night television beamed directly into their homes. What is “common sense” in the new movement does actually contain elements of the blind spots of the “common sense” in prior movements. Attitudes toward religion shifted toward community over dogma. I even suspect that the on-the-ground communities, through benign exposure, have created a less racially charged ground level (which when combined with the limp leftists dogma, funneled toward Trump). However, when the case is prosecuted in an attention economy by its preferred players, it gets chalked up to “messaging” and socioeconomic statistics because that's what fits into headlines, spreadsheets, and egocentric narratives of “guiding” the teeming masses.
Without going deeper, I am compelled to at least mention that “common ground” seems to have given way to a gentrified and aphorismic “middle ground.” This may have an ongoing influence on the half-life of coalitions, their decay into bureaucracies, and the resulting speed (for better or worse) of this kind of cycle."
I am months into writing a piece meant to integrate yours, Williams' and Pinsof's insights in an upcoming post titled: Mutually Assured Reduction: the half-life of coalitions in the Marketplace of Escapisms. I intend to show how escapism bundles "escape to" and "escape from" value propositions in ways that deviate meaningfully (exceptions that prove the rule) from your predictions in Dan's "marketplace of rationalisations." I think it will also lend heavy credence to your original vector on substack arguing for functional biases in ecological contexts.
I hope it piques your interest enough to at least give a once over. Either way, thank you for dispelling my over simplified disillusionment with game theory and coalitional psychology. It seems they are quite powerful tools when used respectfully.
Thank you for these thoughts, Lionel. There's a recent article in The Economist talking about "middle class consciousness" in the UK. As is often the case, it's light-hearted but insightful. I reproduce its thesis below, but if true then modern political coalitions are not just about liberty vs authority -- they're also about taxation, aspiration vs an increasingly expanding role of government. But they might also be about other things -- like environment, energy or globalisation. So it could be complex, and the 'gentrification of the left' might also be some attempted revision of how class and state should work.
> Class consciousness is a simple concept. Before an oppressed class can throw off their shackles, they must know how hard they have it. Karl Marx had workers in mind when he devised it. Increasingly those who are most aggrieved in British society are not those at the bottom but those stuck in the middle. Overtaxed by the state, underpaid by their employers and overlooked by politicians, middle-class consciousness is growing.
> It started with Brexit. For many in the middle class—the relatively well-off, well-educated band of voters who make up about a third of the country—this was a radicalising moment. Comfortable lives were rudely interrupted by politics. Marches against Britain’s departure from the eu represented the “id of the liberal middle classes”, argues Morgan Jones in “No Second Chances”, a forthcoming book about the campaign to undo Brexit.
> What began with “the longest Waitrose queue in history”, as one joker unkindly but not unfairly dubbed the first Brexit march, did not end there. That life is tough in the middle is a feeling that goes beyond people who pay £16 to watch the lads from Led By Donkeys. Traditionally right-wing professions in Britain—such as those in the law and finance—are increasingly unhappy with their lot. The HENRYs (high-earners, not rich yet) are already revolting. Those on six-figure salaries, a small but growing part of the economy given hefty inflation and healthy wage growth, discuss ways of avoiding the grotesque cliff-edges and disincentives that kick in the second someone’s salary trips over £100,000. If no one looks out for a class, it looks after itself.
> Britain’s middle class is less disparate than it seems. The banker and the bookseller have much in common. Even those in normal jobs now face high marginal-tax rates.
Could you be missing the impact of geography? Rural areas were emptied out by the agricultural and industrial transformations. Throughout Canada and the US large cities have prospered and are very progressive. The rural areas and formerly prosperous small and mid sized towns continue to struggle. Even in Alberta, the dark heart of far right conservatism in Canada, the big cities are quite progressive. I am reading Left Behind, by Paul Collier, about this phenomenon. Brexit he says was a result of fury of the left behind regions at London not Brussels.
This is an interesting discussion. I hope however in your next post you can spare some column width to discuss leftwing parties outside the western world. In the sixties, many radical leftwing parties took power across Africa on the wave of revolutionary anti-imperialism. However within a few decades, many of these parties become completely dedicated to the interests of public sector employees, and disinterested in the needs of informal sector workers and the rural poor. Sometimes these workers were highly organized in unions concentrated in capital, in others the "workers" were mostly soldiers and officers. In both cases leaders were incentivized to increase public sector payrolls year after year, regardless of utility.
This was part of why neoliberal reforms eighties were so politically difficult in the eighties, they directly attacked the interests of the ruling parties and their political base. However by the nineties, although still often focused on the parochial interests of the capital professional class, most of these parties entirely abandoned leftist ideology to become generic establishment conservatives. Their gentrification was complete.
Could the shift be explained by a change in the elite class? Historically, highly educated wealthy individuals were often conservative aristocrats with inherited privilege. Today, with greater social mobility and rewards for education, the elite increasingly exhibit openness and risk-taking—traits less aligned with conservatism.
This is a great deep dive into the concept of left and right being multi dimensional axes of political orientation: authoritarian versus libertarian and economic leftism that seeks redistribution versus economic rightism that opposes it. I think maybe it should not be called libertarian but liberal. Libertarian implies a belief in minimal government but liberalism implies a government that does not impose on people but it doesn’t necessarily imply a minimal government. I’m definitely going to read that author who writes about the nature of shifting political alliances! Thanks for this great post! Also I think that writer is named Richard not Norman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKelvey–Schofield_chaos_theorem
Thanks a lot Ken for your feedback. I agree the libertarian/authoritarian and left/right labels are not the best. And you are right about McKelyvey, I corrected it!
The description of the voting coalitions is about right, but the claim that conflict over income distribution has ceased to be a defining feature is wrong. The most extreme example is the Republican tax bill, but the same division is evident in Australia with the fights over the Stage 3 tax cuts and the taxation of super
One fact that has surprised many observers is that as high education high income voters have shifted to left parties, they have also shifted left on economic issues, while the reverse has happened on the right, particularly in the US.
I stopped reading this when I saw the graph on American politicians and they were all clustered in the top right except Sanders. Even Clinton was hanging around those parts.
I don’t know if this is propaganda or comedy, but if it’s the latter, it needed to get much funnier much faster.
The placement of these dots reflects the choice of scaling of the Political Compass. I agree it is skewed.A good choice would have the dots centred around the origin.
I wrote this in response to Dan Williams' calls for intuitions on the subject of an upcoming piece he is writing: the hesitance to criticize science on account of its potential to be politically weaponized. I thought it relevant to share here:
"This sort of “barbarians at the gates” motif is not new with the introduction of the Trumpian hordes. While it might be more defensible now (in that the threat is backed by material leverage), it would be convenient to ignore the now longstanding narrative of “lest pseudoscience gain ground.”
The broader pattern seems to be that if you take flat earthers and conspiracy theorists seriously (good faith engagement), they tend to readily admit that the distrust is the point, not the hyperspecific narratives that set falsifying and Bayesian brains alight.
I think the case to be made, fusing insights from your and Page's most recent articles, would be a cycle such as:
(galvanizing) pressurization → popularization → commodification → gentrification.
For example, the debate over evolution in the classroom galvanized leftward science communities, was popularized by, among others, the New Atheists appealing to a “common sense” notion of “religion bad mmmkay.” This and other dismissive dispositions were then commoditized in the cultural production of the “symbolic capitalists” (Al-Gharbi), and then gentrified as an odd mix of ritualized and “access economy” motifs in a gold rush for new leftist currencies (publish or perish, the performative chivalry of woke purity tests, etc.).
Meanwhile, the right was bifurcating under the radar as the elites of the Right couldn't be bothered with the material interests of their constituency, and while the leftist elites stereotyped and vilified the more dispositionally salient “rednecks” (~poor whites) on radio waves and late night television beamed directly into their homes. What is “common sense” in the new movement does actually contain elements of the blind spots of the “common sense” in prior movements. Attitudes toward religion shifted toward community over dogma. I even suspect that the on-the-ground communities, through benign exposure, have created a less racially charged ground level (which when combined with the limp leftists dogma, funneled toward Trump). However, when the case is prosecuted in an attention economy by its preferred players, it gets chalked up to “messaging” and socioeconomic statistics because that's what fits into headlines, spreadsheets, and egocentric narratives of “guiding” the teeming masses.
Without going deeper, I am compelled to at least mention that “common ground” seems to have given way to a gentrified and aphorismic “middle ground.” This may have an ongoing influence on the half-life of coalitions, their decay into bureaucracies, and the resulting speed (for better or worse) of this kind of cycle."
I am months into writing a piece meant to integrate yours, Williams' and Pinsof's insights in an upcoming post titled: Mutually Assured Reduction: the half-life of coalitions in the Marketplace of Escapisms. I intend to show how escapism bundles "escape to" and "escape from" value propositions in ways that deviate meaningfully (exceptions that prove the rule) from your predictions in Dan's "marketplace of rationalisations." I think it will also lend heavy credence to your original vector on substack arguing for functional biases in ecological contexts.
I hope it piques your interest enough to at least give a once over. Either way, thank you for dispelling my over simplified disillusionment with game theory and coalitional psychology. It seems they are quite powerful tools when used respectfully.
Cheers!
Thank you for these thoughts, Lionel. There's a recent article in The Economist talking about "middle class consciousness" in the UK. As is often the case, it's light-hearted but insightful. I reproduce its thesis below, but if true then modern political coalitions are not just about liberty vs authority -- they're also about taxation, aspiration vs an increasingly expanding role of government. But they might also be about other things -- like environment, energy or globalisation. So it could be complex, and the 'gentrification of the left' might also be some attempted revision of how class and state should work.
> Class consciousness is a simple concept. Before an oppressed class can throw off their shackles, they must know how hard they have it. Karl Marx had workers in mind when he devised it. Increasingly those who are most aggrieved in British society are not those at the bottom but those stuck in the middle. Overtaxed by the state, underpaid by their employers and overlooked by politicians, middle-class consciousness is growing.
> It started with Brexit. For many in the middle class—the relatively well-off, well-educated band of voters who make up about a third of the country—this was a radicalising moment. Comfortable lives were rudely interrupted by politics. Marches against Britain’s departure from the eu represented the “id of the liberal middle classes”, argues Morgan Jones in “No Second Chances”, a forthcoming book about the campaign to undo Brexit.
> What began with “the longest Waitrose queue in history”, as one joker unkindly but not unfairly dubbed the first Brexit march, did not end there. That life is tough in the middle is a feeling that goes beyond people who pay £16 to watch the lads from Led By Donkeys. Traditionally right-wing professions in Britain—such as those in the law and finance—are increasingly unhappy with their lot. The HENRYs (high-earners, not rich yet) are already revolting. Those on six-figure salaries, a small but growing part of the economy given hefty inflation and healthy wage growth, discuss ways of avoiding the grotesque cliff-edges and disincentives that kick in the second someone’s salary trips over £100,000. If no one looks out for a class, it looks after itself.
> Britain’s middle class is less disparate than it seems. The banker and the bookseller have much in common. Even those in normal jobs now face high marginal-tax rates.
https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/05/28/doctors-teachers-and-junior-bankers-of-the-world-unite
Could you be missing the impact of geography? Rural areas were emptied out by the agricultural and industrial transformations. Throughout Canada and the US large cities have prospered and are very progressive. The rural areas and formerly prosperous small and mid sized towns continue to struggle. Even in Alberta, the dark heart of far right conservatism in Canada, the big cities are quite progressive. I am reading Left Behind, by Paul Collier, about this phenomenon. Brexit he says was a result of fury of the left behind regions at London not Brussels.
Its the same all over the world: the big cities absorb all the youth of the countryside, leaving behind dying villages full of bitter old people.
This is an interesting discussion. I hope however in your next post you can spare some column width to discuss leftwing parties outside the western world. In the sixties, many radical leftwing parties took power across Africa on the wave of revolutionary anti-imperialism. However within a few decades, many of these parties become completely dedicated to the interests of public sector employees, and disinterested in the needs of informal sector workers and the rural poor. Sometimes these workers were highly organized in unions concentrated in capital, in others the "workers" were mostly soldiers and officers. In both cases leaders were incentivized to increase public sector payrolls year after year, regardless of utility.
This was part of why neoliberal reforms eighties were so politically difficult in the eighties, they directly attacked the interests of the ruling parties and their political base. However by the nineties, although still often focused on the parochial interests of the capital professional class, most of these parties entirely abandoned leftist ideology to become generic establishment conservatives. Their gentrification was complete.
Could the shift be explained by a change in the elite class? Historically, highly educated wealthy individuals were often conservative aristocrats with inherited privilege. Today, with greater social mobility and rewards for education, the elite increasingly exhibit openness and risk-taking—traits less aligned with conservatism.