Pole A: Security score 0
The State has a duty to protect and needs the means to do so. Common argument for it: without security, no liberty can be exercised in practice.
POLITICAL POSITION · DIMENSION 3 OF 12
State power: security or liberty
State power is the dimension that records how far a person accepts that the State restricts individual liberty for the sake of security and order.
What it is
State power is the dimension that records how far a person accepts that the State restricts individual liberty for the sake of security and order. At the Security pole, broader surveillance, police powers and punishment are accepted to prevent harm; at the Liberty pole, privacy, expression and personal autonomy only give way to strong and controlled reasons.
What the dimension covers
- surveillance and State access to personal data
- police and investigative powers
- severity of sentences
- limits on expression and assembly
The two poles
0 · SecurityLiberty · 100
Pole B: Liberty score 100
The burden of justifying a restriction lies with the State. Common argument for it: power granted to protect tends to grow and to be used against those who disagree.
How the instrument measures it
The Evidence instrument (schema evidence-pol-1) records this dimension as a number from 0 to 100: 0 is the Security pole, 100 is the Liberty pole. The number comes from your answers to the questionnaire or from a result imported from another instrument by URL; either way it is a self-assessment, computed in your browser, and nothing reaches the server without an explicit action from you. With no answer for this dimension, it stays unknown (UNKNOWN), never 50.
| No. | Statement | Agreeing points to |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | The state should not interfere with personal choices that do not harm others, even if they seem risky. | Liberty |
| 15 | In urgent cases, police should be able to monitor suspects' communications without waiting for a court order. | Security |
| 27 | It is better for some guilty people to go unpunished than for one innocent person to be convicted. | Liberty |
| 39 | To reduce crime, it is worth accepting more cameras and identity checks in public spaces. | Security |
Formula p = (resposta - 1) / 4 if agreeing points to Liberty; p = 1 - (resposta - 1) / 4 if it points to Security; placar = 100 * media(p)
There are 4 original statements, with opposite directions to reduce the effect of agreeing with everything. Answers run from 1 to 5 (1 Strongly disagree, 2 Disagree, 3 Neither agree nor disagree, 4 Agree, 5 Strongly agree); "Don't know" does not score. Each answer becomes a position between 0 and 1, the score is the mean position times 100, and confidence combines coverage (how many of the 4 statements scored) and consistency (how far answers point the same way): high from 0.75, medium from 0.50.
In the Evidence portable format, this dimension is the security parameter of the profile URL. Scale, evidence states and limitations are in the instrument method; the terms are in the glossary.
Why it is a separate dimension
It differs from Representation: the question here is the reach of the State over a person, not who governs. It differs from Social norms: Social norms is about which values guide social life; State power is about how much the State may impose, whatever the value.
Compare with Representation and Social norms.
Frequently asked questions
Are security and liberty opposites?
Not necessarily. The dimension records which of the two a person puts first when statements set one against the other. Many answers land in the middle, and that is information too.
Does this dimension relate to data privacy?
Yes. Surveillance and State access to personal data are covered topics. Brazil's data protection law (LGPD), for instance, does not apply to processing done exclusively for public security and criminal investigation (art. 4, III), which depends on specific legislation.
What does a score of 50 on State power mean?
That the answers ended halfway between Security and Liberty, through balance or through a mix of answers in both directions. It is not the same as moderation or the political center, and it says nothing about the other 11 dimensions.
Is my result sent or published?
No. The computation runs in your browser, nothing reaches the server without an explicit action from you, and the result page is not indexed by search engines. Political opinion is sensitive personal data under Brazil's LGPD (art. 5, II, and art. 11).
Literature and references
- Positive and Negative LibertyStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: the two traditions on what it means to be free in relation to the State.
- Freedom of SpeechStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: limits and justifications of free speech.
- Brazilian General Data Protection Law, Law 13,709/2018 (Portuguese)Text of the LGPD; art. 4 covers the public security exceptions.
Reference readings on the topic. None of them validates the Evidence instrument, and no text, question or weight was copied from them.
Conceptual sources of the instrument
The balance between state powers to ensure order and security and individual safeguards against those powers.
Other dimensions
- Related dimensionRepresentationDemocracy · Autocracy
- Related dimensionSocial normsProgressive · Traditionalist
- PreviousRepresentationDemocracy · Autocracy
- NextImmigrationAssimilation · Multiculturalism