The Nolan Test is an ideological analysis tool created in the sixties. Although it was a test designed in the middle of the political situation of the time, it is still widely used in different parts of the world today and thinking about this, today we want to tell you what the Nolan Test is about..
The Nolan Test, also known as Nolan chart is a political diagram created by David Nolan in the year 1969. Political diagrams or spectra are a type of graph that is used to visually organize groups or organizations related to certain conceptual axes in the political sphere..
This graphic aims to define human political positions, with respect to two coordinate vectors, namely: Economic opinion and personal opinion, all in order to create a Cartesian system composed of ideologies.
With the Nolan Test what you are looking for is broaden the spectrum in terms of the analysis of political opinions to overcome the traditional scheme that is one-way and that only allows citizens to be placed on two axes Right or Left, which later becomes a graph made up of two dimensions: degree of personal freedom and degree of economic freedom.
As can be seen in the previous graph, David Nolan constructed a test with two axes, one for economic freedom and the other for personal freedom.. Starting from 0% free which represents Total control of the state, and goes up to 100% free, which represents zero control of the state.
In this line of meaning, 100% economic freedom means free market and 100% personal freedom, it means zero control of the State over the personal decisions of individuals..
In light of the above, it can be said that, According to the amount of freedom of each of the axes, it is possible to ideologically classify a person.
The Nolan Test has its roots in a similar graph, published in 1970 in an essay called The floodgates of anarchy. Here a similar graph was presented, which instead of four faces had eight.
This idea seemed important to David Nolan, considering that analysis focused only on the left and right greatly simplified the true ideological nuances. That is why in 1971 he presented the current graph in an article called "Classifying and Analyzing Politico-Economic Systems" in the magazine The individualist.
This test is known as the shortest political test in the world and is supported by Nolan's discoveries about the amount of control that the government exercises over society, as a defining element of a person's position regarding a political ideology.
In light of the above, Nolan affirmed that any human action in politics is delimited into two generic categories that are the economic sphere and the personal sphere. In the economic sphere we find elements such as what is bought, what is sold, where to work, how to work, what we produce, what we consume.
In the personal sphere, for its part, we find elements associated with particular freedoms such as: the choice of their tastes in terms of books and movies, the decision to have or not have children, issues related to abortion, substance use and others. issues associated with the relationship that the individual has with his mind, with his body and with others.
Taking into account the above and the analysis of both aspects and their relationships, Nolan divides political ideologies into:
Zero government control of both the economy and an individual's personal decisions.
Here the total control of the State over the economic and personal actions of individuals is defended.
In this type of ideology, less control of the State over economic decisions is requested, but greater control over personal freedoms..
Here, less involvement of the State in personal decisions is requested, but greater control of economic conditions.
Here human freedoms are defended both economically and personally, that is why they are opposed to all kinds of taxation in these two aspects.
Here a government control is accepted both economically and personally. Also referred to as "Populism"
Next we will give you some elements with which you can get an idea about other important characteristics, related to the Nolan Test.
According to what was observed in the application of the Test, Nolan assured that the participants after doing it, began to reflect their political orientation from two dimensions, and not from a single dimension as was traditionally applied.
The strongest criticism of the Nolan Test was made by Brian Michell, who considered that politics is not so easy to divide between the personal and the economic, in cases such as immigration. He also assured that there were certain calculation errors, such as in the case of the differences between absolute libertarians and other types of ideological movements like socioliberalism.
This test has been applied in different countries of the world, with the United States being the place where it has been carried out the most times, where it has been possible to observe quite interesting conclusions about the ideological and social behavior of Americans, according to its relationship with morality, with the state and with social interactions.
The Nolan Test can be analyzed in two ways, in the shape of a rhombus as seen in the previous graph, or rotating until it has a square position. In any case, the interpretation does not vary as the data remain the same..
These are roughly the things you should know about him Nolan's test, considering that we live in a society where the political cuts across all spheres of life, and you are likely to run into this test somewhere.
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