Political ideological axis

Overview
A political ideological axis is a particular measure which can be applied to different political ideologies, obtaining results which may vary

Political ideologies are commonly described as falling somewhere in a "left-right" axis, but this habit is generally misleading and appears to arise largely from a more or less arbitrary historical circumstance (a short-lived seating custom in the French National Assembly in the 18th century). Other systems have been proposed, generally using two or more dimensions, and it seems likely that at least four dimensions will be necessary in order to avoid significant ideological conflation.

Context / Usage

 * ideology
 * political ideology (PI): an ideology which has political ramifications (currently redirects to political ideologies)
 * political ideologies: a list of PIs
 * political ideological axis (PIA): a particular measure which can be applied to different ideologies
 * political ideological axes: a list of known PIAs, with historical examples
 * political ideological mapping: sets of PIAs, a.k.a. coordinate systems, which work well together
 * discussion typically focuses on the minimum necessary set of coordinates sufficient to uniquely identify every given PI
 * a map gets extra points if "coordinate distance" between given PIs on the map accurately reflects our intuitive understanding of "ideological distance" between those viewpoints
 * political ideological spectrum: any kind of mapping of {a collection of individual viewpoints} onto a PIA
 * a.k.a. political ideological maps, not to be confused with political ideological mapping
 * political ideological spectra
 * currently redirects to political ideological axes, for historical reasons
 * left-right political axis: the traditional mapping of political ideologies into a single dimension
 * left-right political mapping: the habit of using the left-right political axis as the sole measure of political ideology, and the problems inherent in doing so