Authoritarian vs Libertarian: The Other Political Axis

What the vertical axis measures

The left vs right line mostly tracks economics: equality and public control on one end, markets and private property on the other. Our left vs right politics guide covers that axis in detail.

The authoritarian vs libertarian axis asks a different question: how far should the state reach into your life? It covers things like:

• Personal choices, such as drug use, sexuality and religion.
• Speech and expression, including protest, the press and offensive ideas.
• Security, such as surveillance, policing and emergency powers.
• Social order, meaning how much conformity a society should expect.

Someone toward the authoritarian end trusts the state to set and enforce firm rules. Someone toward the libertarian end trusts individuals to run their own lives.

On our Political Compass Test, the vertical axis averages two scores: a civil score (liberty vs authority) and a society score (progress vs tradition). The Political Values Test reports those two separately, so you can see whether you are, say, socially traditional but strongly protective of civil liberties.

What authoritarianism means

Encyclopaedia Britannica defines the term this way:

Authoritarianism, in politics and government, the blind submission to authority and the repression of individual freedom of thought and action.

Britannica describes authoritarian regimes as systems where power is concentrated in a single leader or a small elite, with no established way to transfer executive power and few civil liberties.

On a political test, though, "authoritarian" usually means something milder: a preference for order, shared rules and a strong state. Plenty of people in democracies lean that way without wanting a dictator.

The psychology research

Psychologists have studied authoritarian attitudes for decades. Three landmarks stand out.

• Adorno and colleagues (1950). Theodor Adorno and his co-authors published The Authoritarian Personality, arguing that some people have traits that make them open to authoritarian rule: willingness to submit to authority, rigid thinking, conventional values and hostility toward out-groups. Britannica notes that the studies behind it suffered from methodological problems.
• Bob Altemeyer (1981). Altemeyer's Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale measures three clusters: submission to established authorities, aggression sanctioned by those authorities, and conventionalism. "Right-wing" here refers to the established order, not economics. His data found that higher scorers tended to back conservative parties, and in Russia that included the Communists, the long-established order there.
• Karen Stenner (2005). In The Authoritarian Dynamic, Stenner argues that authoritarianism is a fairly stable predisposition to intolerance of difference, which becomes active under "normative threat," meaning perceived threats to shared order and sameness. She also argues it is distinct from conservatism.

Researchers still debate how to measure these traits fairly, and critics from several directions argue that some scales blur authoritarian attitudes with ordinary political views.

What libertarianism means

Britannica describes libertarianism as a political philosophy that takes individual liberty to be the primary political value. Libertarians want each person to have as much freedom of action as is consistent with the same freedom for everyone else.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls it "a family of views," often built on self-ownership, the idea that all individuals have ownership rights over themselves. The entry separates two broad camps:

• Right-libertarians let people acquire natural resources and property without an egalitarian limit. This camp includes Robert Nozick and Murray Rothbard.
• Left-libertarians hold that natural resources belong to everyone in some egalitarian way. See our comparison of left-libertarianism vs libertarianism.

Libertarianism has its critics too. Britannica notes a long-standing objection that it rests on an unrealistic, "atomistic" picture of the individual that ignores the role of family, religious community and the state. Communitarians, conservatives and many on the left share versions of this concern.

For how this differs from American liberalism, see libertarian vs liberal.

Why it is separate from left and right

Britannica gives a classic example. On a standard left-right line, Stalinist communists fall at the extreme left and Nazis at the extreme right. Yet Eysenck's two-axis model classifies both as extreme examples of "tough-mindedness." A one-line spectrum cannot show what they shared. A second axis can.

Authoritarian left

State-directed economics with strong central control of political life. The Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin is the textbook historical case, along with other single-party communist states of the Cold War. Related ideologies: Leninism, Maoism and state socialism.

Authoritarian right

Hierarchy, nationalism and order enforced by a strong state. Historical cases include fascist Italy and the military juntas that ruled Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Uruguay in the second half of the 20th century. In democratic politics, milder versions appear in strands of national conservatism and social conservatism that stress borders, policing and public morality.

Libertarian left

Equality and cooperation without a coercive state. Thinkers include Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Peter Kropotkin. Related ideologies: anarcho-communism, libertarian socialism and anarcho-syndicalism.

Libertarian right

Free markets plus personal freedom, with a minimal state or none at all. Related ideologies: libertarianism, minarchism and anarcho-capitalism.

The Nolan chart and Eysenck

Two older models made the second axis popular.

Hans Eysenck. The British psychologist proposed a two-axis model. One axis ran from radical to conservative. The other ran from "tender-minded" to "tough-minded," which Britannica describes as capturing levels of authoritarianism: tough-minded actors were more willing to use harsh or dictatorial methods.

David Nolan. Nolan, a former member of Students for Goldwater who helped found the US Libertarian Party (officially formed in December 1971), rejected the single left-right line. His chart used two axes, economic freedom and personal freedom. Libertarians sit where both are high, the opposite of the authoritarian corner.

Our political compass explained guide shows how modern two-axis tests build on these ideas.

The best case for each side

Each pole answers a real problem, and each side's strongest argument is worth hearing.

The case for more authority

• Order comes first. Thomas Hobbes argued that without a strong sovereign, life becomes insecure for everyone. Rights mean little without safety.
• Security against real threats. Crime, terrorism and pandemics may require coordinated action that only a capable state can provide.
• Social cohesion. Shared norms and institutions help strangers trust each other and keep communities stable.
• Protecting the vulnerable. Rules on drugs, gambling or child safety can protect people who are poorly placed to protect themselves.

The case for more liberty

• Autonomy. John Stuart Mill argued that people should be free to run their own lives so long as they do not harm others.
• Dissent drives progress. Free speech lets unpopular ideas be tested, and many once-unpopular ideas later won broad acceptance.
• Limits on abuse. Power can be misused, whoever holds it. Britannica's account of authoritarian regimes, from secret police to captured courts, shows the stakes.
• Local knowledge. Individuals and communities often understand their own needs better than distant officials do.

Authoritarian vs libertarian on key issues

These are the typical positions at each pole. Most people mix and match.

Find your place on the axis

You probably already have a hunch about where you sit. A test turns that hunch into a score.

The Political Compass Test places you on both axes in about six minutes. For a quick read on this axis alone, try the How Libertarian Are You? quiz. If you want the liberty vs authority question split out from social tradition, the Political Values Test scores civil liberty and social values separately, and the 12 Axes Political Test goes deeper still.