Run TNO classification in Claude
You want to make a classification of your actually state of your country? You lack a well know labels for every state? I tell to claude to classificate the countries with the labels of The New Order: Last Days of Europe game. This is the result:
Classifying Real-World Countries with TNO Ideologies (2025)
What if we took the ideology system from The New Order: Last Days of Europe and applied it to real countries today?
The Hearts of Iron IV mod TNO features a detailed political ideology spectrum that goes well beyond the vanilla game's simplistic four-way split. After the Toolbox Theory rework, the mod uses 11 ideology groups arranged roughly from left to right:
Communism โ Socialism โ Progressivism โ Liberalism โ Liberal Conservatism โ Conservatism โ Paternalism โ Despotism โ Ultranationalism โ Fascism โ National Socialism (+ Esoteric Nazism at the extreme)
I thought it'd be an interesting exercise to map 15 real-world countries (as of 2025) onto this spectrum. Here's what I came up with.
The TNO Ideology Cheat Sheet
Before we get into the classification, here's a quick refresher on what each relevant ideology means in TNO terms:
| Ideology | TNO Definition |
|---|---|
| Progressivism | Social democracy, welfare-state advocacy, reform-oriented leftism. Think expanded social programs and workers' rights within a democratic system. |
| Liberalism | Democratic consent of the governed, individual rights, capitalism with governmental oversight, universal suffrage. The "sane center" of TNO's democratic world. |
| Liberal Conservatism | Conservative policies blended with liberalism. Free-market economics, traditional values, but operating firmly within democratic norms. Includes Market Liberalism. |
| Conservatism | Promotes traditional social institutions, hierarchy, authority, property rights. Seeks to preserve religion, parliamentary government, and social stability. |
| Paternalism | Strong executive power with some democratic elements (parliament, elections), but their real impact on governance varies. Ranges from presidential dictatorships to military mandates. Formerly called "Authoritarian Democracy." |
| Despotism | Single-leader rule across a wide range: absolute monarchies, theocracies, military dictatorships, centrist dictatorships. Elections are either absent or purely decorative. |
I'm skipping Communism, Socialism, Ultranationalism, Fascism, National Socialism, and Esoteric Nazism because โ thankfully โ no country on this list maps to those categories in 2025.
The Classification
Democratic Spectrum (Progressivism โ Conservatism)
| Country | TNO Ideology | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| ๐ช๐ธ Spain | Progressivism | Sรกnchez's PSOE-Sumar coalition: welfare expansion, labor reforms, social justice legislation within a parliamentary democracy. |
| ๐จ๐ฑ Chile | Progressivism | Boric's government pursues expanded social programs, labor reforms, and progressive social policies. Solid democratic framework. |
| ๐ฌ๐ง UK | Progressivism / Liberalism | Starmer's Labour leans Progressivism (workers' rights, NHS investment). The institutional baseline (parliamentary democracy, common law, market economy) is Liberalism. |
| ๐ซ๐ท France | Liberalism | Macron's centrist, pro-EU, market-friendly but socially liberal governance. Strong democratic institutions with capitalist economy and state oversight. |
| ๐ฉ๐ช Germany | Liberalism / Lib. Conservatism | Federal parliamentary system, social market economy, robust welfare state. CDU-led coalitions emphasize market economics with social guardrails. |
| ๐จ๐ฆ Canada | Liberalism | Strong democratic institutions, universal healthcare, multicultural policies. The structural center of gravity sits in Liberalism regardless of governing party. |
| ๐ต๐ฑ Poland | Liberalism | After the Tusk coalition replaced PiS (late 2023), Poland shifted back toward EU-aligned rule of law and liberal-democratic norms. Recovering from a Paternalism/Conservatism phase. |
| ๐ฏ๐ต Japan | Liberal Conservatism | LDP dominance for decades. Functional parliamentary democracy with socially conservative values (immigration, family) combined with liberal economic policy. Textbook Lib-Con. |
| ๐ฆ๐ท Argentina | Liberal Conservatism | Milei governs on an explicitly libertarian platform: radical deregulation, free-market economics, privatization โ all within democratic institutions. Market Liberalism sits under Lib-Con in TNO's taxonomy. Over 1,200 deregulations implemented, midterm elections held normally, Congress functions. |
| ๐ฎ๐น Italy | Conservatism | Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia: national identity, traditional values, immigration restriction, Atlanticist foreign policy โ all within democratic institutions. |
| ๐บ๐ธ USA | Conservatism (โ Paternalism) | Full democratic institutions remain, but the Trump administration's emphasis on tradition, strong executive action, and nationalist rhetoric fits Conservatism. Expansion of executive power and pressure on institutional checks push it toward the Paternalism border. |
Authoritarian Spectrum (Paternalism โ Despotism)
| Country | TNO Ideology | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| ๐ช๐ฌ Egypt | Despotism (borderline Paternalism) | El-Sisi holds elections and has a parliament, but opposition candidates are routinely jailed, press freedom is minimal, and the military dominates. Token democratic structures keep it near the Paternalism line. |
| ๐ท๐บ Russia | Despotism | Nominal democratic structures exist (elections, the Duma), but opposition is suppressed, media is state-controlled, and power is concentrated around Putin. Ultranationalist rhetoric around Ukraine could push it further right, but the regime's core logic is personal power consolidation. |
| ๐ธ๐ฆ Saudi Arabia | Despotism | Absolute monarchy under MBS. No meaningful elections, no political parties, no legislative opposition. Vision 2030 modernization doesn't change the political structure. |
| ๐จ๐ณ China | Despotism (nominally Communist) | The CCP officially adheres to Marxism-Leninism, but actual governance โ state capitalism, no democratic participation, power concentration under Xi, surveillance state โ is Despotism in practice. Communist rhetoric, Despotic reality. |
The Spectrum Visualization
LEFT โโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโโบ RIGHT
PROG LIB LIB-CON CON PATERN DESPOT
โ โ โ โ โ โ
Spain France Japan Italy ยทยทยท Russia
Chile Germany Argentina USAโโโโโโโบ Saudi Arabia
UK Canada China
Poland Egypt
Some Observations
The democratic world clusters tightly. All Western democracies fall between Progressivism and Conservatism โ just four ideology steps apart. The biggest debates in these countries (welfare vs. austerity, progressive vs. traditional values) are minor shifts on the TNO scale.
The Paternalism gap is real. There's a noticeable jump between the democratic bloc and the authoritarian one. Few countries in this list sit comfortably in Paternalism โ they're either clearly democratic or clearly despotic. The USA's trend toward executive power concentration is the closest any Western democracy gets to that line.
Nobody reaches Fascism or beyond. Despite heated political rhetoric in many countries, none of these 15 nations map to Ultranationalism, Fascism, National Socialism, or Esoteric Nazism. In the real 2025 world, that's a good thing.
China is the hardest to classify. Its official ideology (Communism) and its actual governance (Despotism) point in completely different directions on the TNO spectrum. TNO itself deals with this tension โ the mod is full of nominally one thing, functionally another.
Argentina is the wildcard. Milei's radical libertarianism is hard to place in any political taxonomy, but TNO's inclusion of Market Liberalism under Liberal Conservatism actually makes it a surprisingly clean fit.
Disclaimer: This is a fun thought experiment, not rigorous political science. TNO ideologies were designed for a fictional 1960s alt-history, and mapping them to 2025 reality is inherently approximate. Reasonable people can disagree on placements โ especially for borderline cases like the USA or Egypt.