Precautionary and Proactionary as the Twenty-first-century’s Defining Ideological Polarity

Abstract

The modern Right-to-Left ideological spectrum is an artefact of the seating arrangements at the French National Assembly after the revolution of 1789. To the right of the Assembly’s president sat the supporters of King and Church, while to the Left sat their opponents, whose only point of agreement was the need for institutional reform. The distinction capitalized on long-standing cultural associations of right- and l eft-handedness with, respectively, trust and suspicion — in this case, of the status quo. In retrospect, it is remarkable that this distinction managed to define partisan political allegiances for more than 200 years, absorbing both the great reactionary and radical movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But the decline in voter turnout in most of today’s democracies suggests that this way of conceptualizing ideological differences may have become obsolete. Some have even argued that ideologies and parties are irrelevant in an increasingly fragmented political landscape. We strongly disagree. However, upon understanding what the old Right—Left division was really about, it becomes clear that it is now due for a 90-degrees rotation on its axis to recapture the spirit of the original division. That spirit is defined in a question: should it be presumed that the past dictates the future, unless proven otherwise? Those on the Right say ‘yes’ and hence practise a positive politics of induction; those on the Left say ‘no’ and hence practise a negative politics of induction.