The Political Spectrum

Updated 22 January 2026

The political spectrum is a one-dimensional model that depicts relative distribution of power.Weber, Max. "Politics As a Vocation." 1918. "Hence, 'politics' for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state." When comparing multiple points on the horizontally oriented spectrum, we note their position in terms of "left" and "right."

Left and Right

The terms left and right originate in the national assemblies of France during the Revolutionary Period. Members who supported the monarchy and the three-estates system gathered to the right of the president, continuing a long-standing tradition in which the honored or privileged guests of the king (or his representative, the president, in this case) sat to his right. Those who wanted to limit the power of the church and state and usher in a more democratic society congregated to the president's left.Hodgson, Geoffrey M. Wrong Turnings: How the Left Got Lost. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. pp. 32-33. "In the National Constituent Assembly of 1789, those deputies most critical of the monarchy began to congregate on the seats to the left of the President's chair. Conservative supporters of the aristocracy and the monarchy would congregate on the right side of the Assembly. ... Those seated to the Left of the National Constituent Assembly wished to limit the powers of the monarchy, and eventually to create a democratic republic. ... Those on the Right wished to maintain the authority of the crown by means of a royal veto, to preserve some rights of the aristocracy, to have an unelected upper house, and to maintain major property and tax qualifications for voting. By contrast, the Left demanded an end to aristocratic privileges, limitations to the power and privileges of the church, a single-chamber legislature in which all power rested with democratically elected representatives, and a broad popular—but wholly male—franchise." Since then, Western society has associated the political left with people, ideologies, and movements that seek a greater distribution of power, and the political right with those seeking a greater concentration of power.Hess, Karl. Dear America. 1975. "Power, concentrated in few hands, is the dominant historic characteristic of what most people, in most times, have considered the political and economic right wing. The far left, as far as you can get away from the right, would logically represent the opposite tendency and, in fact, has done just that throughout history. The left has been the side of politics and economics that opposes the concentration of power and wealth and, instead, advocates and works toward the distribution of power into the maximum number of hands."

That is to say, the left is associated with an increased diffusion of power, and the right is associated with an increased concentration of power.

Center

To this, we will add another term—the center. The center represents the current distribution of power. Because the political spectrum is a relative measure, the center of one society may differ significantly from that of another. A centrist, or moderate, is someone who promotes political positions that are near the center of their society, i.e., that don't significantly change the distribution of power.

The Four Parties

We can further subdivide the political spectrum to segregate the moderate from the extreme positions, resulting in four "parties," from right to left: reactionaries (absolutists), conservatives, liberals, and radicals.Rohmer, Friedrich. "Die Vier Parteien." Lehre von den politischen Parteien. 1844. "[I]t is not arbitrary to apply the same labels to parties in various European countries, regardless of their national labels. By this I mean the well-known words, 'radical,' 'liberal,' 'conservative,' (also 'aristocratic'), 'absolutistm' (or, 'reactionary'), and 'moderate,' terms which all European languages use to describe a general intellectual or aspirational tendency which transcends local peculiarities and local origins."

Reactionaries want to concentrate power into the hands of a select few imbued with the right to rule. They are absolutists who believe in an absolute right to rule, often granted by a divinity. This extreme right wants to return to the kinds of political structures that existed in the past—autocracies, theocracies and dictatorships.

Conservatives want to reform the state to reduce democratic control. They believe that power should be held only by certain individuals, often referred to as the aristocracy ("the best people"), and want to maintain elite privilege without resurrecting past political structures.

Liberals want to reform the state to expand democratic control to all citizens. In other words, liberals want the concentrated power of the state, but they want it directed by all its members more or less equally. Liberals are a progressive party, but they want gradual change.Rohmer, Friedrich. "Die Vier Parteien." Lehre von den politischen Parteien. 1844. "The friends of the new want progress, either with protection of existing conditions (liberals in the narrow sense) or without, relentlessly and fundamentally (radicals)."

Radicals want to restructure the core of society to dissolve all concentrations of power. They are also a progressive party, but they would like to see a decisive break between the current and future society.Rohmer, Friedrich. "Die Vier Parteien." Lehre von den politischen Parteien. 1844. "To some, radicalism is a mistaken extreme, to others it is the ultimate consequence of the liberal principle." The word radical derives from the Latin radix, which means root and refers to their commitment to fundamentally change society.

Ideologies

A more complete picture emerges when we arrange political ideologies on the political spectrum: from left to right are the radical ideologies, anarchism, communism, and socialism; social democracy and social liberalism; classical liberalism, libertarianism, and conservativism; and, finally, the reactionary ideologies, fascism and monarchism.