Thinkers and political figures
Every position here is one the person actually stated or enacted, with sources. Where the record is thin on a dimension, that dimension is left unscored rather than guessed at.

Abraham Lincoln
United States · 1809–1865
Liberal republicanism

Abul Kalam Azad
India · 1888–1958
Composite nationalism, Islamic modernism

Adam Smith
Scotland · 1723–1790
Classical liberalism

Adolf Hitler
Germany · 1889–1945
Nazism

Alexander Hamilton
United States · 1755–1804
Federalism, commercial nationalism

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
United States · b. 1989
Democratic socialism

Alexis de Tocqueville
France · 1805–1859
Liberal conservatism

Ali Khamenei
Iran · b. 1939
Islamic republicanism, clerical rule

Amartya Sen
India · b. 1933
Social liberalism, capability approach

Angela Merkel
Germany · b. 1954
Christian democracy

Antonio Gramsci
Italy · 1891–1937
Western Marxism

Anwar Sadat
Egypt · 1918–1981
Economic liberalisation, pragmatic nationalism

Aristotle
Macedon and Athens · 384–322 BCE
Classical republicanism

Atal Bihari Vajpayee
India · 1924–2018
National conservatism

Augusto Pinochet
Chile · 1915–2006
Authoritarian neoliberalism

Aung San Suu Kyi
Myanmar · b. 1945
Liberal democracy

Ayn Rand
Russia and the United States · 1905–1982
Objectivism

B. R. Ambedkar
India · 1891–1956
Social liberalism, anti-caste radicalism

Bal Gangadhar Tilak
India · 1856–1920
Radical nationalism

Barack Obama
United States · b. 1961
Social liberalism

Benazir Bhutto
Pakistan · 1953–2007
Social democracy, liberal reform

Benito Mussolini
Italy · 1883–1945
Fascism

Benjamin Netanyahu
Israel · b. 1949
National conservatism, economic liberalism

Bernie Sanders
United States · b. 1941
Democratic socialism

Betty Friedan
United States · 1921–2006
Liberal feminism

Bhagat Singh
India · 1907–1931
Revolutionary socialism, atheism

Bill Clinton
United States · b. 1946
Third Way liberalism

Boris Johnson
United Kingdom · b. 1964
National conservatism

Boris Yeltsin
Russia · 1931–2007
Market liberalism, presidentialism

Carl Schmitt
Germany · 1888–1985
Authoritarian constitutional theory

Chanakya
Magadha, India · c. 375–283 BCE
Statecraft realism

Chandra Shekhar Azad
India · 1906–1931
Revolutionary socialism

Charles de Gaulle
France · 1890–1970
Gaullism

Che Guevara
Argentina and Cuba · 1928–1967
Marxism-Leninism, guerrilla revolution

Clement Attlee
United Kingdom · 1883–1967
Democratic socialism

Confucius
State of Lu, China · 551–479 BCE
Confucianism

David Ben-Gurion
Israel · 1886–1973
Labour Zionism

Deng Xiaoping
China · 1904–1997
Market reform under one-party rule

Donald Trump
United States · b. 1946
Right populism, national conservatism

Dwight D. Eisenhower
United States · 1890–1969
Modern Republicanism

Edmund Burke
Ireland and Great Britain · 1729–1797
Classical conservatism

Edward Said
Palestine and the United States · 1935–2003
Postcolonial criticism

Emiliano Zapata
Mexico · 1879–1919
Agrarian revolutionary socialism

Emmanuel Macron
France · b. 1977
Liberal centrism

Emmeline Pankhurst
United Kingdom · 1858–1928
Militant suffragism

Ferdinand Marcos
Philippines · 1917–1989
Authoritarian populism

Fidel Castro
Cuba · 1926–2016
Marxism-Leninism, anti-imperialism

Francisco Franco
Spain · 1892–1975
National Catholicism, authoritarian conservatism

Franklin D. Roosevelt
United States · 1882–1945
Social liberalism

Frantz Fanon
Martinique and Algeria · 1925–1961
Anti-colonial revolutionary thought

Frederick Douglass
United States · 1818–1895
Abolitionism, radical republicanism

Friedrich Engels
Prussia, later England · 1820–1895
Communism

Friedrich Hayek
Austria and the United Kingdom · 1899–1992
Classical liberalism

Gamal Abdel Nasser
Egypt · 1918–1970
Arab socialism, pan-Arabism

George W. Bush
United States · b. 1946
Compassionate conservatism, neoconservatism

George Washington
United States · 1732–1799
Republicanism

Getúlio Vargas
Brazil · 1882–1954
Corporatist populism, developmentalism

Giorgia Meloni
Italy · b. 1977
National conservatism

Giuseppe Garibaldi
Italy · 1807–1882
Republican nationalism

Golda Meir
Israel · 1898–1978
Labour Zionism

Haile Selassie
Ethiopia · 1892–1975
Modernising monarchy, Pan-Africanism

Hannah Arendt
Germany and the United States · 1906–1975
Republicanism, political theory

Hillary Clinton
United States · b. 1947
Liberal internationalism

Ho Chi Minh
Vietnam · 1890–1969
Marxism-Leninism, anti-colonial nationalism

Hugo Chávez
Venezuela · 1954–2013
Bolivarian socialism

Ibn Khaldun
Tunis and Cairo · 1332–1406
Historical sociology

Immanuel Kant
Prussia · 1724–1804
Liberal republicanism, cosmopolitanism

Indira Gandhi
India · 1917–1984
State socialism, centralised executive power

Isaiah Berlin
United Kingdom · 1909–1997
Value pluralism

Jacinda Ardern
New Zealand · b. 1980
Social democracy

James Madison
United States · 1751–1836
Constitutional republicanism

Javier Milei
Argentina · b. 1970
Libertarianism, right populism

Jawaharlal Nehru
India · 1889–1964
Democratic socialism, secular nationalism

Jayaprakash Narayan
India · 1902–1979
Sarvodaya, total revolution

Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Geneva and France · 1712–1778
Republicanism, popular sovereignty

Jeremy Bentham
England · 1748–1832
Utilitarianism, legal reform

Jeremy Corbyn
United Kingdom · b. 1949
Democratic socialism

Joe Biden
United States · b. 1942
New Deal liberalism, industrial policy

John F. Kennedy
United States · 1917–1963
Social liberalism

John Locke
England · 1632–1704
Classical liberalism

John Maynard Keynes
United Kingdom · 1883–1946
Keynesian liberalism

John Rawls
United States · 1921–2002
Egalitarian liberalism

John Stuart Mill
England · 1806–1873
Liberalism

José de San Martín
Argentina, Chile and Peru · 1778–1850
Independence, constitutional monarchism

José Martí
Cuba · 1853–1895
Republican nationalism, Latin Americanism

Joseph Stalin
Soviet Union · 1878–1953
Marxism-Leninism, totalitarian rule

Juan Perón
Argentina · 1895–1974
Peronism, corporatist populism

Julius Nyerere
Tanzania · 1922–1999
African socialism

Justin Trudeau
Canada · b. 1971
Social liberalism

Karl Marx
Prussia, later England · 1818–1883
Communism

Karl Popper
Austria and the United Kingdom · 1902–1994
Open society liberalism

Kim Il-sung
North Korea · 1912–1994
Juche, hereditary totalitarianism

Kim Jong-un
North Korea · b. 1984
Hereditary totalitarian rule, Juche

Konrad Adenauer
West Germany · 1876–1967
Christian democracy

Kwame Nkrumah
Ghana · 1909–1972
Pan-Africanism, African socialism

Lal Bahadur Shastri
India · 1904–1966
Gandhian socialism

Lee Kuan Yew
Singapore · 1923–2015
Developmental authoritarianism

Leon Trotsky
Russia and the Soviet Union · 1879–1940
Trotskyism

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Brazil · b. 1945
Democratic socialism, left populism

Lyndon B. Johnson
United States · 1908–1973
New Deal liberalism

Mahathir Mohamad
Malaysia · b. 1925
Developmental nationalism

Mahatma Gandhi
India · 1869–1948
Anti-colonial nationalism, non-violence

Malcolm X
United States · 1925–1965
Black nationalism, Pan-Africanism

Manmohan Singh
India · 1932–2024
Economic liberalism, social democracy

Mao Zedong
China · 1893–1976
Marxism-Leninism

Margaret Thatcher
United Kingdom · 1925–2013
Market conservatism

Marine Le Pen
France · b. 1968
National populism

Martin Luther King Jr.
United States · 1929–1968
Social democracy, non-violent civil rights

Mary Wollstonecraft
England · 1759–1797
Liberal feminism, radical republicanism

Maximilien Robespierre
France · 1758–1794
Jacobin republicanism

Michael Collins
Ireland · 1890–1922
Republican nationalism

Michel Foucault
France · 1926–1984
Post-structuralism

Mikhail Bakunin
Russia · 1814–1876
Collectivist anarchism

Mikhail Gorbachev
Soviet Union · 1931–2022
Reform communism, social democracy

Milton Friedman
United States · 1912–2006
Classical liberalism

Montesquieu
France · 1689–1755
Constitutional liberalism

Muammar Gaddafi
Libya · 1942–2011
Third International Theory, personalist rule

Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Pakistan · 1876–1948
Muslim nationalism, constitutional liberalism

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Turkey · 1881–1938
Secular nationalism, single-party modernisation

Napoleon Bonaparte
France · 1769–1821
Bonapartism, enlightened autocracy

Narendra Modi
India · b. 1950
National conservatism

Nelson Mandela
South Africa · 1918–2013
Social democracy, civic nationalism

Niccolò Machiavelli
Florence · 1469–1527
Republicanism, political realism

Nikita Khrushchev
Soviet Union · 1894–1971
Reform communism

Oliver Cromwell
England · 1599–1658
Puritan republicanism

Olof Palme
Sweden · 1927–1986
Democratic socialism

Otto von Bismarck
Prussia and Germany · 1815–1898
Conservative nationalism, state paternalism

Park Chung-hee
South Korea · 1917–1979
Developmental authoritarianism

Patrice Lumumba
Democratic Republic of the Congo · 1925–1961
Pan-Africanism, anti-colonial nationalism

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy
India · 1879–1973
Dravidian self-respect, rationalism

Peter Kropotkin
Russia · 1842–1921
Anarchist communism

Pierre Trudeau
Canada · 1919–2000
Liberal federalism

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
France · 1809–1865
Mutualist anarchism

Pol Pot
Cambodia · 1925–1998
Agrarian totalitarianism

Ram Manohar Lohia
India · 1910–1967
Democratic socialism, anti-caste politics

Rani Lakshmibai
India · 1828–1858
Anti-colonial resistance

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Türkiye · b. 1954
Religious conservatism, national populism

Richard Nixon
United States · 1913–1994
Conservative realism

Robert Mugabe
Zimbabwe · 1924–2019
African nationalism, personalist rule

Robert Nozick
United States · 1938–2002
Libertarianism

Ronald Reagan
United States · 1911–2004
Market conservatism

Rosa Luxemburg
Poland and Germany · 1871–1919
Democratic socialism

Ruhollah Khomeini
Iran · 1902–1989
Islamic republicanism, clerical rule

Saddam Hussein
Iraq · 1937–2006
Ba’athism, personalist dictatorship

Salvador Allende
Chile · 1908–1973
Democratic socialism

Sarojini Naidu
India · 1879–1949
Congress nationalism, women’s suffrage

Sayyid Qutb
Egypt · 1906–1966
Islamism

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
Bangladesh · 1920–1975
Bengali nationalism, secular socialism

Shinzo Abe
Japan · 1954–2022
Conservative nationalism

Silvio Berlusconi
Italy · 1936–2023
Media populism, liberal conservatism

Simón Bolívar
Venezuela and Gran Colombia · 1783–1830
Republican nationalism

Simone de Beauvoir
France · 1908–1986
Existentialist feminism

Subhas Chandra Bose
India · 1897–1945
Revolutionary nationalism, authoritarian socialism

Sukarno
Indonesia · 1901–1970
Anti-colonial nationalism, guided democracy

Sun Yat-sen
China · 1866–1925
Republican nationalism

Theodore Roosevelt
United States · 1858–1919
Progressivism, national conservatism

Thomas Hobbes
England · 1588–1679
Absolutism, social contract

Thomas Jefferson
United States · 1743–1826
Agrarian republicanism

Thomas Paine
England, United States and France · 1737–1809
Radical republicanism

Thomas Sankara
Burkina Faso · 1949–1987
Revolutionary socialism, Pan-Africanism

Tony Blair
United Kingdom · b. 1953
Third Way social liberalism

Toussaint Louverture
Saint-Domingue (Haiti) · 1743–1803
Abolitionist revolution

V. D. Savarkar
India · 1883–1966
Hindutva, Hindu nationalism

Vallabhbhai Patel
India · 1875–1950
Conservative nationalism within Congress

Viktor Orbán
Hungary · b. 1963
National conservatism, illiberal democracy

Vladimir Lenin
Russia and the Soviet Union · 1870–1924
Marxism-Leninism

Vladimir Putin
Russia · b. 1952
Authoritarian nationalism

Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Ukraine · b. 1978
Civic nationalism, liberal democracy

W. E. B. Du Bois
United States · 1868–1963
Civil rights, Pan-Africanism, socialism

Willy Brandt
West Germany · 1913–1992
Social democracy

Winston Churchill
United Kingdom · 1874–1965
Conservatism, imperial nationalism

Woodrow Wilson
United States · 1856–1924
Progressive liberalism, liberal internationalism

Xi Jinping
China · b. 1953
Marxism-Leninism, state capitalism

Yasser Arafat
Palestine · 1929–2004
Palestinian nationalism

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Pakistan · 1928–1979
Islamic socialism, populism