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introduction By June 1986, liberal parties were represented in the governments often of the thirteen Western European countries examined in this book. This was a better record than, for example, social democratic, socialist or labour parties could boast at that time. Yet, in the post Second World War period, liberal parties have generally been counted far more in electoral terms than with regard to their role in coalitions and governments. They have consequently been regarded as ‘small’ or ‘minor’ parties and their influence has been neglected or concealed. Influence over government policy can be exercised both from within a governing coalition and from without. The latter prevailed, for example, in Italy in the mid to late seventies when the Communist Party became a ‘silent partner’ in government by often abstaining in votes on bills the ruling Christian Democratic Party introduced in parliament – undoubtedly at a bargaining cost over policy content. On the other hand, participation within a governing coalition is no guarantee for wielding influence, if either no cabinet posts are held (as, for example, in the British Lib–Lab Pact in the seventies) or only a few and relatively unimportant portfolios are held by a particular party. In other words, the number and importance of portfolios held, the length of time parties have been either in government or in certain ministries, and similarities and differences in policy content vis-à-vis other coalition partners become important factors over whether or not influence can be wielded by particular parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

introduction In the same way as in neighbouring West Germany and Belgium, and for similar reasons, the identification of a liberal party in Luxemburg presents no difficulty, the Demokratesch Partei qualifying by virtually any criterion. Of all the parties considered in this volume, the DP is by far the smallest in absolute terms but this has not prevented it from becoming one of the more important. In recent years especially, both domestically and internationally, it has become one of the most highly-influential liberal parties in Europe. For this reason alone, no study of present-day liberalism in Western Europe could be complete without reference to the Luxemburg Demokratesch Partei. This influential position is due to a number of factors, of which the most important are probably the DP's almost uniquely high (for a European liberal party) vote percentage; its regular participation in government (and hence from time to time the presidency of the EC council of ministers); its rather strategic position virtually in the ideological centre of European liberalism; and, not the least important, the personality of several of its leaders since the Second World War, most notably Gaston Thorn. Yet, as an organised party political force, liberalism was a distinctly late developer in the Grand Duchy, the country's first proper liberal party not emerging until as late as 1925 or so, even though both as a philosophy and as a political tradition, liberalism has had a long history in Luxemburg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To talk about parties belonging to liberalism in Switzerland is not an easy task. To the outsider the Swiss political system is quite a sophisticated one; so sophisticated that a political scientist following an approach based on economic rationality would give up the idea of studying such a country, since it is far too complicated given its political weight and influence in the world system. As a federal country, Switzerland is divided into 26 states (cantons and half-cantons) with their own political culture, tradition, administration and party systems. The country is split into four languages and two religions; some cantons are bilingual and others are bi-denominational. Federal parties are rather vague and badly organised bodies, and the main parties are cantonal. Parliamentary parties and parliamentary groups do exist, but they are quite undisciplined. Even the social democrats are unable to achieve the political cohesion they show in other parliaments in the world. MPs do not sit either following the French hemicycle or the British ‘face to face’ opposition system. In the Senate – Conseil des Etats, Ständerat–they sit by cantonal delegation and in the House – Conseil national, Nationalrat – the MPs' desks are allocated according to a rather mysterious formula, combining language, party and canton, with decisions taken randomly. There is no majority rule, and the sole opposition is made up of small right-wing and left-wing parties – xenophobes, neo-fascists, communists and left socialists – even the ecologists accept the rules of amicable agreement. This means that the majority/opposition pattern varies depending on the issues involved. When an opposition party becomes electorally important, it receives a portfolio in either the federal or cantonal cabinets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

introduction At the general election in March 1983, the Finnish Liberal People's Party, Liberaalinen Kansanpuolue (LKP), lost its toehold in the 200 seat national assembly (Eduskunta). This meant for the first time since the creation of a modern legislative system in Finland in 1907, there were no liberal representatives in parliament – precisely the same fate which had befallen the Norwegian Liberals (Venstre) two years earlier. To many observers of the Finnish political scene, this disastrous result for LKP came as little surprise, and the newspaper obituaries to mark the peaceful demise of the party were doubtless composed shortly after the Liberals' decision to become a member organisation of the Centre (formerly Agrarian) Party early in 1982. It was in this twilight world as ‘a party within a party’ that LKP lost all four of its parliamentarians and plummeted to an all-time nadir of 0.8 per cent of the active electorate in 1983. It seemed the end of the line for Finnish liberalism and its absorption into a federated political centre similar to the UDF in France. The road back for the party will be long and hard. At the local government elections in October 1984, to be sure, LKP contrived to increase its vote slightly (1.3 per cent of the valid poll) and then emboldened by the resurgence of liberalism in neighbouring Sweden and the 14.3 per cent gained by Folkpartiet at the autumn 1985 general election, LKP seized the opportunity of breaking the knot with the Centre Party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

introduction The first task in any study of liberalism in Denmark is to decide which parties can justifiably be classified as ‘liberal’, given the country's fragmented party system, particularly since 1973. There are two main candidates for this label and both will be dealt with in this chapter. The name of the first, Venstre, (founded in the 1870s) translates literally as ‘The Left’, which relates to the party's nineteenth-century origins as the proponent of electoral reform and the parliamentary principle of governmental responsibility to the popularly elected majority. Under the name ‘The United Left’, Venstre issued Denmark's first political party manifesto in 1872, emphasising reformist aims and opposition to the anti-parliamentary government of ‘The Right’ which continued to hold power under the monarch until 1901. The name Venstre is sometimes translated into English as the Liberal Democratic Party, and sometimes as Agrarian Liberals, in recognition of the main source of their electoral support, both originally and currently. In 1970 the party confirmed its own claim to its liberal inheritance by formally adopting a suffix to its name, becoming Venstre – Danmarks liberale Parti. The second candidates for the ‘liberal’ label are the Radical Liberals, Det radikale Venstre (often referred to as the Radicals). They broke away from Venstre in 1905, partly reflecting dissatisfaction among smallholders that Venstre's tax reforms bore more heavily on them than on large farms, and partly because of their objection to proposed increases in defence expenditure. Nevertheless, the Radicals shared Venstre's orientation towards individual political participation and limited government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

introduction Sweden is commonly looked upon as the middle-way Schlaraffenland, yet its citizens have not found the middle parties to their liking. Rather, the Liberal Party, (Folkpartiet) has often been made an object of ridicule by its opponents and in the media; television cannot resist the temptation to portray the party as an unholy alliance of atheist social science professors from Stockholm and pietist smallholders from the hinterland. The Liberal Party's overall performance has not generally been applauded by the Swedish electorate. The party's reluctant stance on whether to join bourgeois coalition cabinets engendered much antipathy towards them among the public at large. The Liberal Party was seen as the champion of the ‘alternating-majority formula’ of governing, i.e. minority cabinets depending on either bourgeois or socialist support to pass legislation in parliament. Political tightrope walking is alien to the rationalist political culture of Sweden. Time and again political commentators have prophesied the demise of the Liberal Party. Predictions of this kind have repeatedly turned out to be premature, most obviously in 1985 when the Liberal vote soared to 14.2 per cent from a previous all-time low of 5.9 per cent in 1982. This chapter is meant to be an introduction to the nature and trends of Swedish liberal politics. The various topics raised in the course of the empirical analyses will be synthesised in a concluding discussion on whether Sweden is an illiberal society or, on the contrary, too liberal to be in need of a liberal party, or if the Liberal Party (until very recently) has misconceived its mission in Swedish politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

introduction The subject of this essay is the Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ), traditionally translated into English as the Freedom Party of Austria. It is a party with numerous internal contradictions, especially of an ideological nature. For years after its launch in 1956, it was almost universally reviled in Austria as a party of old Nazis. In 1979 it joined the Liberal International and now wishes to be known in English as the Liberal party of Austria. In 1983, the FPÖ commenced its first ever period of federal governmental office, and in a coalition with the Socialists at that. This essay seeks to explain the FPÖ's transition from a party of protest to a party of government. First, it will show that the FPÖ's contradictions are a hallmark of the political tradition from which it derives. Secondly, it will examine the current tensions and conflicts in the FPÖ's organisation. Thirdly, I shall look at the party's often precarious electoral situation, concentrating in particular upon the profile of its protest voters, who have traditionally constituted a substantial proportion of the FPÖ's electoral support. Then, I shall outline the programmatic development of the party, with special reference to the most recent developments in the relationship between the FPÖ's national and liberal traditions. The penultimate section of this paper will concentrate upon the party's experience in government. Here the party appears to have had some success in one of its major objectives, namely to start reducing the influence of Austria's very powerful and ubiquitous system of Proporz (the party-political allocation of public offices). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

historical background During the 1820s, an alliance between Catholics and Liberals had successfully brought about the independence of Belgium from the Netherlands. This Catholic–Liberal alliance – or unionism as it came to be known – continued until 1840 given the need for national unity whilst the Netherlands refused to accept the legitimacy of Belgium's separate existence. Unionism was characterised by the formation of bipartisan Catholic–Liberal coalition governments regardless of parliamentary strengths. The latent church–state conflict was kept off the political agenda and the main political battles were not between clericals and anti–clericals but between conservatives and progressives over issues such as the extension of the electoral franchise. The difference between the conservatives and the progressives was, as Kossmann points out, one of temperament rather than doctrine or social origin (see Kossmann (1978) 167). Unionism effectively ended in 1839 with the recognition by the Dutch of Belgian independence, a move which led to greater and more open hostility between Catholics and Liberals. The Liberals, in particular, were the aggressors, feeling that too many concessions had been made to the Catholics in order to gain the support of the Roman church in the struggle for national independence. Although the Liberals were not anti-religious, (indeed, many were practising Catholics), the party demanded a clearer separation between church and state as well as a recognition that the church was subordinate to the state in all temporal matters. For many Liberals, the main bone of contention surrounded the Catholic church's monopoly control of primary education and its attempt to gain a similar position within the sphere of secondary education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

introduction France has never had a great liberal party in the way that Canada or Great Britain have. Furthermore the word ‘liberal’ in France does not mean the same as it does in English. In France, its principal meaning is opposition to state intervention in economic or social life. For the French, Thatcherism is a kind of liberalism. In identifying liberalism in France, therefore, we shall not be looking for a great party with a long tradition but we shall be seeking to identify political forces belonging to Gordon Smith's ‘liberal-conservative’ classification rather than to a ‘liberal-radical’ one. The chapter chooses to identify the UDF (Union pour la Démocratie Franchise), a federation of parties which were known as the Giscardiens when Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was president, as the political force that is best described as liberal. There are two reasons for this. One is that the Giscardiens have always used the word liberal in their appeal to the electorate and in their attempt to distinguish themselves from their coalition partners, the Gaullist RPR. The second is that Giscard d'Estaing as a political leader has been an authentic liberal in the English as well as the French sense of the word. In his speeches and writings before and during his presidency he has argued for tolerance, civil liberties, social reform, a less authoritarian and centralist style of government, and more recently for moins d'état – rolling back the state. Choosing the Giscardiens as the French liberal party is nevertheless risky. First of all, they are not a party but a collection of three parties (plus several other smaller fragments). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

introduction Organised liberalism has survived in Britain in the face of a number of formidable obstacles. Although once one of two great parties of state, the principal social cleavage it helped articulate, religion, has long since lost its electoral significance. After the First World War British politics came to be dominated by class, and in the process the Liberal Party not only lost electoral support but also split on more than one occasion and saw one wing of the party joining the Conservatives. Since 1945 none of its members has held ministerial office and by 1951 its electoral support had fallen to 2.5 per cent of the vote. These difficulties have been compounded by the operation of the singlemember plurality system which has ensured that its geographically evenly spread vote has never been able to secure more than a handful of seats. Yet despite this unfavourable combination of circumstances, organised liberalism has not only survived but now flourishes. There is but one Liberal Party able to command a level of support which would in any other West European country accord it major party status. True, it has given up some of its independence by entering into an electoral alliance with the Social Democratic Party, formed in 1981 after a split within the Labour Party. But the formation of that party was encouraged by the leader of the Liberal Party himself as a means of pursuing the party's long-term strategy and now the SDP–Liberal Alliance is seen by some as the rekindling of a progressive ideological tradition which originated within the Liberal Party at the turn of the century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

introduction On the face of it, it may seem obvious that the Free Democratic Party (FDP) has acted as the standard bearer of liberalism in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1949. Certainly, the party is invariably classified by observers both inside and outside the country as being ‘liberal’. There is also considerable evidence, in the FDP's manifestos and other documents as well as in the fact that the party's candidates usually bear ‘liberal’ labels, to suggest that such a designation is widely accepted without question. In addition, the party has long been a leading member of the Liberal International. Yet when we begin to look beyond the label at the actual principles which the FDP professes to champion and which it wants to see implemented and protected, any apparent clarity of purpose and distinctiveness immediately becomes blurred and ambiguous. Whilst this can be partly explained by reference to the difficulties involved in defining ‘liberalism’ as a whole, the FDP's problems in establishing an identity for itself based on ‘liberal’ ideas have been accentuated by the party's enforced role within the post Second World War German party system as a ‘corrective’ or ‘pivot’ between the two major parties, the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD). This means that the FDP is often able to exploit its structural position as a usually indispensable coalition partner in order to base its electoral appeal on its ability to prevent either main party achieving an absolute majority in the Bundestag. The party also claims that ‘moderation’ in the conduct of the federal government results from its fulfilling of such a role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

introduction; who are the italian liberals? When identifying liberalism in Italy after the Second World War, familiar comparative distinctions between types of liberalism are indeed relevant. Such distinctions as between ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ – or between ‘social’ and ‘economic’ or simply ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’ forms of liberalism are all directly applicable to the Italian Republican and Liberal Parties respectively, as a broad description of their basic and somewhat divergent programmatic outlooks over time. As to that other set of distinctions between liberal parties, namely whether they are ‘historical’ or de jure as against de facto or ‘behavioural’ forms of liberalism, the PLI and PRI fall respectively into the two different categories. This is first and foremost because the former calls itself ‘liberal’ and the latter does not, although this is not to deny that the Republicans represent a ‘historical’ party in Italy of their own variety. In other words, the PRI and the PLI express different versions of the same ideological tendency as seen in comparative terms. So far as this Italian example is concerned, any diachronic assessment of the two parties in question will show that however much they have converged strategically and programmatically in recent years they nevertheless boast separate traditions, have usually followed different paths in government and have for most of their histories possessed rather distinct social and electoral bases. Acknowledging therefore the truism that political parties are hardly static entities, such mutual movement on the part of the PRI and PLI may well be viewed as pursuing ‘two roads of Italian liberalism’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]