North-wing politics

Politically, 'North-wing' describes a viewpoint based on the 360' compass rather than the traditional left-right scale. Simplistically, this viewpoint represents collective authority, and social normality, and where the compass is used to describe in the South-wing a political viewpoint that is relativist, or post-modern, the north-wing of the compass is neo-modernist or re-modernist in approach.

A north-wing, or 'northwing' position is the opposite of south-wing, which represents libertarian relativism.

The history of the Political Compass

H. J. Eysenck was first to create a multi-axis political model in his 1964 book "Sense and Nonsense in Psychology", though other multi-axis models have been developed including that by American David Nolan in 1970.

The definition used here is based on the Political Compass created by Pace News Limited, which expands on the Eysenck model and is widely accepted. There is also a New Political Compass TM created by Paul Ray, and whilst he usefully labels the North "the New Progressives", the model is less internationally recognised outside of the US. In the Political Compass the Left-Right line represents Economic attitude and retains some of its traditional political meaning in terms of State versus Personal control. The North-South line represents Social attitude and is respectively collective Authority in the North, and personal Liberty in the south.

J.C. Lester's analysis of multi-axis political models, but which uses opposite labelling for the North-South polar is also an interesting read and can be found here: http://www.la-articles.org.uk/pc.htm.

See also

• Political compass