About PolitiCompass

PolitiCompass is an independent educational project about political ideas. It exists because the vocabulary most people use to discuss politics — a single line running from left to right — stopped describing the disagreements that actually organise contemporary politics some time ago, and because the alternative frameworks are mostly locked inside academic literature.

The site has three parts. The test maps your positions on two axes across fifteen questions. The encyclopedia sets out sixteen political traditions, each with its founding arguments, core commitments, the strongest objections raised against it and its approximate position on the compass. The essays examine particular questions in more depth: how liberalism has rebuilt itself repeatedly, why populism is a structure of argument rather than a set of policies, what the evidence on social mobility actually shows.

The site is written and maintained by Ottavio Malatacca. It is not affiliated with any political party, campaign, think tank or advocacy organisation, and receives no funding from any of them. It is funded by advertising, which is disclosed on every page carrying an ad unit and described in our cookie policy.

Our editorial commitment is specific rather than a general claim to neutrality, which no one can honestly make. Every ideology entry presents the strongest version of a tradition's own argument before presenting the strongest objections to it, including for traditions the author personally rejects. Where a tradition is internally divided, the entry says so instead of presenting one faction as the whole. Where the evidence on a disputed question is genuinely mixed, we say that too rather than picking the side that makes for a cleaner sentence.

Sources are listed on every substantial page. We cite the primary works of the traditions described, not summaries of them, and readers are encouraged to go to those works rather than treating this site as a substitute.

Corrections are taken seriously. If you find a factual error, a misrepresented position or a source that does not support what we have attributed to it, please write to us. Substantive corrections are made and noted.