Is Post-War Sierra Leone left wing or right wing?

On economic organisation Post-War Sierra Leone scores +04 on a scale from −10 (common ownership) to +10 (private property and markets). On social and cultural order it scores +06. A single left–right figure combines these and four further measurements that move independently, which is why the atlas reports six.

Is Post-War Sierra Leone authoritarian?

On the organisation of power, which measures whether authority is dispersed among institutions that can stop each other or concentrated in a single centre, Post-War Sierra Leone scores +01. Power has changed hands by election in 2007 and 2018; the special court convicted a former Liberian president for his role in the war.

Atlas / Organisations / Post-War Sierra Leone

Post-War Sierra Leone

SLPP / APC · 2002– · Sierra Leone · Competitive Blocs · Electoral party · coding confidence medium

+04ECmarket

+06CUtraditional

+01AUmonist

+03SCcentral

+04IDascriptive

−04CHlawful

Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →

Core principles

Two regionally based parties alternating in power after a war notorious for amputation and child soldiering.

Economic model

Diamonds, iron ore, agriculture; among the lowest incomes in the world; free quality education from 2018.

Organisation of powers

Power has changed hands by election in 2007 and 2018; the special court convicted a former Liberian president for his role in the war.

Check a claim about Post-War Sierra Leone. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.

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The evidence for every score

All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.

EC · Economic organisation · scored +04

Coded +4: minerals and agriculture with free quality education from 2018.

Documented act or statuteAround a fifth of the national budget was allocated to the free education programme.

CU · Social and cultural order · scored +06

Coded +6: religiously plural and socially conservative.

Documented act or statuteChristian and Muslim communities coexist with unusually low friction; same-sex relations remain criminalised.

AU · Organisation of power · scored +01

Coded +1: power has changed hands by election twice since the war.

Documented act or statuteAlternation occurred in 2007 and 2018.

SC · Scale of decision · scored +03

Coded +3: a unitary state with paramount chiefs in the districts.

Documented act or statuteChieftaincy remains a formal tier of local governance.

ID · Rule of membership · scored +04

Coded +4: two regionally based parties mapping onto ethnic blocs.

ScholarshipVoting correlates strongly with region and language group.

CH · Method and tempo · scored −04

Coded −4: a war ended by intervention and a special court.

Documented act or statuteThe special court convicted a former Liberian president in 2012 for his role in it.

Nearest organisations by measured distance

Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.

Countries

Sierra Leone

Cite this page

Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.

McGrath, K. (2026). Post-War Sierra Leone. The Political Atlas, version 4.2. https://thepoliticalatlas.com/organisations/sierraleone/ (accessed 2026-08-01).

Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.