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The first ever quiz I took to find out whether I was a libertarian or not was the World’s Smallest Political Quiz (WSPQ) Well, as I already considered myself not just libertarian but anarcho-capitalist (I had just finished reading the Machinery of Capitalism), I scored a perfect 100 on both personal and economic self government aspects of the quiz.

Later on, I came across Politopia — the land of custom made government. But naturally, my score was unchanged. This site had more colour and was a tad more sophisticated. Look at the map below — the star is where I “live” in Politopia–the Northwest, yup right next to Ayn Rand.
There’s a nice explanation of the concept as well as a list of many other such quizzes here. (But read it after taking the quiz.)

While doing my regular blog browsing I came upon another quiz from the Agitator, Radley Balko’s blog. Devised by Bryan Caplan of George Mason University, the Libertarian Purity Test (LPT) claims to give a clearer breakdown between hard and soft-core libertarians.

Radley scores a 98. I thought the perfect score was 100. It’s actually 160. I scored a 147. This is what Caplan has to say about the score

You are nearly a perfect libertarian, with a tiny number of blind spots. Think about them, then take the test over again. On the other hand, if you scored this high, you probably have a good libertarian objection to my suggested libertarian answer. :-)

So far so good. But these quizzes aren’t blemish free.

• They are largely US centric. Policy issues like social security or military bases in foreign countries are unique to the US. LPT asks you to judge specific US government policies with the implicit assumption that you’re a US citizen.
• The design and ordering of questions and answers is overly simplistic. Politopia gives 5 multiple choices for each question. One answer is most libertarian, one most anti-libertarian and the rest soemwhere in between. That’s ok. But they are specifically ordered and that order is maintained throughout the quiz. So if you know that say answer #3 is most libertarian, you can blindly click on 3 to get a high score on being a libertarian. Makes it like a Cosmo quiz. “If you score mostly A’s, the guy loves you, if you scored mostly B’s, dump him, etc”

WSPQ is brief and direct. That’s why I still prefer it. The explanations however are far better in Politopia and LPT. Caplan even gives you a statistical break-up of those who took the quiz. So go forth and get yourself “tested”!

Update: The Libertarian Purity Test seems to be making waves all over the blogosphere. Tim Lambert and Joe Carter are keeping score!