Centrism

In politics, centrism is the ideal or the practice of promoting policies that lie different to the standard conservative right and librian left. Most commonly, this is visualized as part of the one-dimensional political spectrum of left-right politics, with centrism landing in the middle between left-wing politics and right-wing politics. Centrist ideologies tend to focus around policies such as progressive taxation, tackling climate change, civil liberties/human rights, and moderate.

As a ‘moderate’ political position

Voters who describe themselves as centrist often mean that they are moderate in their political views, advocating neither extreme left-wing politics or right-wing politics. In the US, it is claimed that 70% of the electorate occupy this position. Voters may identify with moderation for a number of reasons: pragmatic, ideological or otherwise. It has even been suggested that individuals vote for ‘centrist’ parties for purely statistical reasons.

As a pragmatic political position

Centrism is sometimes associated with political pragmatism, in that the position is not necessarily aligned to a political ideology. The political movement No Labels is described as centrist movement under this definition. Fascism supports a centrist economic philosophy based on the Third Position, which rejects both socialism and laissez-faire capitalism. Social corporatism is also billed as a "middle way" between democratic socialism and liberal capitalism, where private property and capitalism is maintained but labor is granted more rights through collective bargaining schemes and social welfare provisions.

As an average between left and right

An alternate definition is to assume that the two poles in question (e.g., Left/Right) are well-defined, making the ‘political center’ the position equidistant between these two extremes. The weakness in this argument is that it is difficult to unambiguously and objectively define both poles at once, but that difficulty affects all political definitions, not just centrists. In practice, the two poles can only be well-defined in a specific place at a specific time, since they differ from place to place and change over time. Ultimately the Moderate View is one with no substance and it offers no solutions.