[cia_plant]

The economist is further left than throwback traditionalist movements like Islamism or the US Evangelical Right, on the rightward side of the consensus liberal-democratic center, certainly right of socialist movements. It uses a sort of high-handed pseudo-objective tone but is actually highly political and opinionated.

[dmazin]

This is pretty much the best short description of The Economist's editorial policy I've seen, though I don't think like you do that it has a pretense of objective tone. For one, literally the entire article you just discussed openly regards The Economist's editorial stance (i.e. bias).

[dmerfield]

The best description of The Economist's editorial position I've come across is the one mentioned in the linked article: classically liberal. The preceding comment about left-and-right clarifies nothing and is ironic given that the original article rejects the left-right characterization.

Also, you only need to read a few articles in the Economist before coming across the phrase 'this newspaper believes' which should eradicate any suspicions of objectivity, pseudo or otherwise.

[slurry]

'Classically liberal' is a gesture of self-congratulation, not a useful descriptor.

[thomaspaine]

How so? "Classically liberal" is a way of differentiating oneself from the modern definition of liberal and is basically a friendly way of saying "libertarian" without invoking images of Glen Beck.

[nickff]

'Classical liberal' evokes thoughts of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who have little in common with the staff of 'The Economist'. 'The Economist' is not alone in claiming this mantle, as Alan Wolfe has made similar statements (though his claim may be on shakier ground), but it is speculative and presumptive. The classical liberals did not envision many policies put forward by this magazine, and it is doubtful that Smith and Ricardo would have supported them.

[legutierr]

> ...and it is doubtful that Smith and Ricardo would have supported them.

Examples?

[aaronblohowiak]

There is no way in which The Economist is libertarian -- they believe in a very strong governmental banking system and frequently poo-poo countries for having too few taxes or too few government services. Also, reference the editorial opinion on government's role in health care.

[wyager]

Not to mention The Economist's fetishes for gun control and government health care monopoly.

[rnnr]

Yeah, yet a bit of a travesty of a classical liberal for supporting administrations like Obama's.

I agree with your definition of classical liberal, Economist doesn't subscribe to it.

[vidarh]

Most of the old, classically liberal parties in Europe that formed the start of liberalism as a political movement fits politically from well left of Obama to pretty much where he is.

[vidarh]

"Classically liberal" from a European viewpoint at least varies by country, but is generally considered as close to the political centre compared to e.g. libertarianism.

In many countries it would evoke social liberal ideas, in others it would evoke more conservative liberal ideas, but most will be found to the left of our conservative parties an to the right of our socialist parties (and often to the right of our social democratic parties). Overall, the "gravitational point" of "classically liberal" parties is probably centre-right.

So from a European point of view, it is a "useful descriptor" to the extent it places someone in a fairly narrow range in the political centre vs. for example "libertarian" which today tends to evoke firmly right wing populist or laissez faire politics (despite the existence of plenty left wing libertarian ideologies, such as left-communism, minarchism or libertarian marxism, but these are rarely described as such, and in Europe at least rarely self-identify as libertarian).

[001sky]

'Classically liberal' is a gesture of self-congratulation, not a useful descriptor.

No offense, but the same point could be put to your comment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

[odobenus]

Best capsule summary of the Economist's political position I've ever read: "The in-flight magazine of Davos Man." (from a forgotten and unfindable blog entry)

[pbreit]

The best short description is probably "fiscally conservative, socially liberal".

[allochthon]

They are hard to categorize in terms of "left" and "right," as the terms are applied in the US. A distinction should be made here between economic and financial questions, on one hand, and other questions, on the other hand. In matters unrelated to economics and finance, they are generally quite progressive. In matters relating to economics and finance, they are invariably willing to justify and rationalize all manner of backwardness in the existing order (in my opinion); but occasionally they can be surprisingly forward-thinking in these areas as well.

Personally, I find their positions to be refreshingly orthogonal to those of news organizations based in the US.

[fragsworth]

It's not just the Economist, but western politics generally suffers a from unidimensional "left to right" classifications of the vast, multidimensional world of political viewpoints. It's actually kind of off-putting to see people classified only as being "left" or "right" of others.

For instance, you can easily be in favor of personal liberty, and also want smaller government. Or you can be against abortion rights, and also want welfare programs for the poor. These things are in no way tied together by any philosophical reasoning.

[djur]

There are identifiable philosophical positions of "left" or "right" that don't necessarily indicate slavish adherence to any particular left-wing or right-wing party's platform. A given policy (welfare programs) can be justified by either a left-wing or a right-wing framework.

Left and right are different motivations and different ways of seeing the world more than they are different policy platforms.

[vidarh]

That's of course because left vs. right originally referred to the factions seated to the left and the right of the president in the French parliament after 1789.

The left were people supporting the revolution. The right were people supporting the king.

The left were thus generally looking for change, and more freedoms, and formed the core of liberalism. With the rise of socialism, liberalism in Europe got confined around the centre.

But of course as you point out it is difficult to classify, as e.g. already back then socialism was by no means uniquely left wing (Marx criticised ideologies he considered as "feudal" or "reactionary" socialist ideologies that would fit on the right in the "classic" French left/right split, for example), and terms like libertarian also spans the full spectrum (you have libertarian Marxists, various anarchist tendencies, left-communism etc.).

If you consider a few axes, though, you get a good idea: - level of support for authority and personal freedoms (e.g. from no state at all to authoritarian state), level of protection of private property (e.g. no legal support for private property of means of production to considering protection of private property as one of the most important aspects of government), and level of secularism. Of course there's plenty of oddballs combinations.

> Or you can be against abortion rights, and also want welfare programs for the poor. > These things are in no way tied together by any philosophical reasoning.

You might be surprised. In Europe, most Christian parties fall centre-right to moderately conservative and tended to have separated out of either the conservative or liberal parties, or become the dominant force in their countries conservative parties, and do indeed often argue against abortion rights yet want welfare programs for the poor for clearly defined philosophical reasons.

The general philosophical reasoning for most of these parties in Europe can be shortened to "personal freedoms and personal responsibility, but not at the expense of christian morality", and the christian morality part both moderates the personal freedoms (abortion views etc.) and strengthens the social commitment (welfare). In Latin America, these parties tends to be more left wing. There's at least a century old tradition of "Christian democrat" thinking.

[dobbsbob]

There's a reason none of the economist articles have writing credits. It's because nobody would normally care what a 20something hipster thinks about markets and politics, and believe they are receiving wisdom from experienced economists and analysts but if you walk into their offices it's just kids having a lark, trolling away.

[leot]

If you can recommend a more information-rich resource on world affairs, I'd be delighted to hear of it.

[dobbsbob]

I have to aggregate it from everywhere. For example, Le Monde diplomatique, Der Spiegel, New Yorker Magazine, Al Jazeera, The Spectator, New Statesman, any publication that actually prints names so you can check the bias of the author, or look at their other pieces to see if they are just party hacks or just making stuff up, especially when reading opinion pieces. I also have a Stratfor account that I mainly read for lulz and leak info on hacker tradecraft from :P

For specific information, I contact my foreign service located in the country I want info about, and sometimes other embassies like the UK embassy. Often you can just email them and receive back a surprisingly frank and accurate account on their economy and political situation. This is open to anybody generally. I was interested in setting up a small biz in Bulgaria so just contacted my countries' trade mission there and they sent me everything there is to know about the current situation there, including underground nightclub scenes in their publication about culture, I was pretty surprised how thorough it was.

When I get time I go on business school/university polisci dept websites and look at their press releases and research papers which come out steadily every week usually. Most professors write articles for the Guardian or other publications. The European, Australian, New Zealand, and Asian schools are the best, no pay walls.

Jewish publications typically write a lot about human rights status in various countries, so I check those too. http://www.cjnews.com/news/hungarian-filmmaker-fears-his-chi... is an article I found after my country decided to refuse refugee claims from Hungary, claiming it was 'safe'. No other media bothered to cover it hardly and just accepted the government's decree.

[Tloewald]

The economist is conservative, back when that word meant something other than reactionary, but that's been a long time.

[pcrh]

It's politics are old-fashioned Tory politics, i.e. maintaining the health and education of the workers is good policy for industrialists and landowners.

The workers, and everyone one else should otherwise be allowed to live their lives as freely as possible, as long as they don't try to usurp the gentry.

[Tloewald]

I think that's a bit unfair. The Tories were and are socially conservative.

[batemanesque]

THANK YOU