New OTL Maps project: Political parties

Thande · May 21, 2009

All right. With Qazaq making maps bigger and more detailed than the Earth itself, I think we've pretty much solved the OTL Map problem in terms of states (what's usually confusingly referred to as a 'political map').

But there are other styles of maps that would be useful for sources. For example, ones showing which political parties are in power at the moment in different countries.

This thread's object is to develop a system, much like the UCS and its rivals have been codified for normal maps, which can adequately show what kind of ideological position the ruling parties in different countries have, and how democratic those countries are.

A prototype is to follow.

Thande · May 21, 2009

All right, so here is a (very!) crude prototype map I've made just by going through Wikipedia and looking up all the ruling parties across the world.

Some points:

I have used the small Diamond basemap because it is sufficiently detailed for this purpose and because we really need maps you can fit on your screen all in one go. Note these are mainly for informative purposes, not to serve as modifiable basemaps.
Purple is used for too many things here - centrism, liberalism, strongman 'stans without ideology, ideologies that don't fit under any normal qualification like Libya's, etc. This will have to be improved.
Question: should we show the de facto or de jure situation? I leaned towards the former here by showing the LRA, Congolese rebels and Somaliland, but didn't put too much effort into it.
I have judged whether a party is left or right based on how it sees itself and its position in context in its own country. To take one obvious example, the U.S. Democrats are shown as centre-left even though they are to the right of most conservative parties in other Western nations. In many cases, especially African countries where parties are based on loyalty to individual political heavyweights rather than ideology, my classification is somewhat arbitrary and I admit it can be debated.
What is a dictatorship and what is a democracy is also heavily debatable, e.g. in the cases of states where opposition parties are allowed, but never win anywhere near enough seats to come close to unseating the ruling party. We may need more levels of variation there.

Aside from this, take this as a starting point and begin making suggestions for new colour schemes/systems!

LSCatilina · May 21, 2009

For democracies, maybe will need to have 2 colors to represents far-right and far-left parties will could made a democract country a dictatorship

a revolutionnary Communist Party -> Proletarian Dictatorship, People's Democracy
a facist/nazist/otherist far-right party -> Fascist/National-Socialist/Otherist Dictatorship

P.S : i'm not sure that France could be in that blue color, maybe lighter blue?

Thande · May 21, 2009

LSCatilina said:
P.S : i'm not sure that France could be in that blue color, maybe lighter blue?

I made France and Italy the brighter blue because, while their ruling parties are centre-right, it seems to me that their president and PM respectively are particularly far to the right based on the political culture there, in the same way that some Americans in all seriousness can call Obama a socialist.

However I appreciate this point is very debatable.

Zimmerwald1915 · May 21, 2009

I'm going to take issue with #4; if this is a world map it should use a world-wide rubric of what is left and right, not this silly "left or right in the context of the country" bullcrap.

Miserism · May 21, 2009

You could always pull a Political Compass. A red-blue scale for economic liberalism (free trade vs. socialism?) and a light-dark scale for freedom.

Light red/pink would be for the libertarian states, cyan for the social democrats, crimson for China and navy blue for the military juntas?

Landshark · May 21, 2009

In what bizzaro universe is Canada more right wing than America!?!

Roberto · May 21, 2009

I agree with the others Thande, it makes more sense to use a general scale instead of "in context", because the latter really skews up perspective.

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, this is a great idea, but there's a slight problem in the implementation. It really doesn't make sense to show France and Canada as more right-wing than the United States when we all know that they're not.

Also, historical versions of this map might get a bit sticky considering that you couldn't show colonial posessions easily...

Thande · May 21, 2009

It's not supposed to show countries' ideologies in relation to each other, I don't think that's particularly useful. It's supposed to serve so we can see at-a-glance that "in this 1887 OTL map, France is ruled by its right-wing party, yet in this 1890 one, it's ruled by its left-wing party", which would be useful for planning timelines.

In a perfect world we'd be able to state the specific parties but that's kind of impossible without an extra dimension's worth of colour shades.

xt828 · May 21, 2009

Isn't Thailand still democratic at the moment? Their present government was formed, IIRC, by MPs changing their allegiance, but they were still all elected at the last election.

Thande · May 21, 2009

xt828 said:
Isn't Thailand still democratic at the moment? Their present government was formed, IIRC, by MPs changing their allegiance, but they were still all elected at the last election.

It's debatable. They certainly shouldn't be the same colour as Burma, but this crude prototype scheme only had so many levels. But they're certainly not fully democratic either, what with the blanket ban on Thaksin's supporters and the military coups.

JJohnson · May 21, 2009

LSCatilina said:
For democracies, maybe will need to have 2 colors to represents far-right and far-left parties will could made a democract country a dictatorship

a revolutionnary Communist Party -> Proletarian Dictatorship, People's Democracy
a facist/nazist/otherist far-right party -> Fascist/National-Socialist/Otherist Dictatorship

P.S : i'm not sure that France could be in that blue color, maybe lighter blue?

Fascism wants government intervention, like communism, and socialism, to solve people's problems; I would recommend a coloration based on 'statist' versus 'libertarian' where a darker color is more statist (believing in more centralized control over more aspects of a country), and a lighter is more libertarian (believing in less centralized and more localized control over aspects of a country). This would avoid the left/right argument.

As for actual colors, I'm sure the UCS can be adapted somehow. But the 'right-wing' and 'left-wing' spectrum we use as a quick method of reference, I don't think it captures the full spectrum of differences in political ideology between countries. How would you present the CDU, FDP, US Democrats, the Tories, the former Whigs in the US, etc. in a simple straight line, when they have a spectrum of issues? A multi-pointed graph or line graph on a core set of issues would be helpful for comparison purposes, but for quick, at a glance reference, lighter/darker shades of self-identified or internationally agreed on ideologies may be better able to capture the differences.

Perhaps red for communist governments, green socialist, brown fascist, blue democratic/republican governments (democracies or republics), and purple monarchies to start off, and we can go from there?

Thande · May 21, 2009

JJohnson said:
This would avoid the left/right argument.

Not really. The government intervention thing is only really an argument in the USA and a couple of other industrialised nations. Aside from the 19th century, there hasn't really been any era in which any other form of government rather than statism has been a serious option.

Anyway, the point here as I said is to show changes in ruling party in countries, not to tie it to specific ideologies.

Zimmerwald1915 · May 21, 2009

Miserism said:
You could always pull a Political Compass. A red-blue scale for economic liberalism (free trade vs. socialism?) and a light-dark scale for freedom.

Where do people (including socialists

) get the idea that socialism and protectionism are the same thing?

[/offtopic]

Anyway, I think that "in this 1887 OTL map, France is ruled by its liberal republicans, yet in this 1890 one, it's ruled by its liberal republicans (better sample years could be chosen)" is more instructive than "in this 1887 OTL map, France is ruled by its right-wing party, yet in this 1890 one, it's ruled by its left-wing party".

Miserism · May 21, 2009

Zimmerwald1915 said:
Where do people (including socialists) get the idea that socialism and protectionism are the same thing?

[/offtopic]

I was at a loss where to place social democracies if following the free trade-protectionism axis, and nobody would care for a three-axis legend...

Zimmerwald1915 · May 21, 2009

Miserism said:
I was at a loss where to place social democracies if following the free trade-protectionism axis, and nobody would care for a three-axis legend...

Why not just be simple and honest, call it a free-trade/protectionism axis and not muddy up your terms?

83gemini · May 21, 2009

Miserism · May 21, 2009

Zimmerwald1915 said:
Why not just be simple and honest, call it a free-trade/protectionism axis and not muddy up your terms?

Ugh. Hindsight's 20/20 though, right?

Screw that idea, then. How about a system still based on two axes: one axis based on the powers its citizens hold over the state, and another based on its social views (given economic-related criteria would not work if we look into the past)?

First row would be the "progressive" row, second would be the status quo, third row would be the "reactionary" row.

First column would be reserved for complete autocracies while the rightmost one is for multi-party democracies.

Zimmerwald1915 · May 21, 2009

Why even bother having a continuum system? Find the broad ideologies of governing parties (classic liberal/libertarian, radical, conservative, reactionary, militarist [incl. Bonapartist], social-democratic, communist, fascist, green, centrist, Christian democrat, etc.). Assign each a color. There, you're done. Ignore the system of government (democratic monarchy, democratic republic, autocratic monarchy, autocratic republic, etc.), or, if you feel you must include it, have variations based on a simple binary differentiation between democracy and autocracy.

For example, democracies are tints, autocracies are shades (incidentally, this means that no country will have the "pure" color; it will always be a tint or shade of the color listed).

VT45 · May 21, 2009

Miserism said:
Ugh. Hindsight's 20/20 though, right?

Screw that idea, then. How about a system still based on two axes: one axis based on the powers its citizens hold over the state, and another based on its social views (given economic-related criteria would not work if we look into the past)?

http://img199.imageshack.us/my.php?image=49437505.png
First row would be the "progressive" row, second would be the status quo, third row would be the "reactionary" row.

First column would be reserved for complete autocracies while the rightmost one is for multi-party democracies.

I second this scheme. This one seems to make more sense than the one Thande posted. No offense.