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I merged the articles liberal parties and worldwide liberalism (I created them both) into one article and deleted paragraph which are allready in the article liberalism. In this way it fits better in the series on liberalism. Gangulf 20:43, 25 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think it isn't appropriate to list Margherita (Italy) here, as it is the result of the merger of a liberal and a christian democratic party. It belongs as much in the christian democratic parties than here. I would call it "centrist", but because it has many christian democratic members (probably the majority), not "liberal".

You might be wright, I will add a remark at this party Gangulf 20:50, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Suggested additions

It is suggested to add the following parties. At the moment they are in the list, but I am reworking this list. In this reworking I am doubting if many of these party should be included. In my opinion the list should not include defunct parties or parties of which the potential to enter parliament seems to be rather small (micro-party). I invite readers to make their remarks after my remark on each of these parties.

Argentina

Armenia

The question is, why shouldn't the micro-parties be included? Are they less liberal? And is it to an objective editor to judge which parties have potential to enter the parliament? Anyway, some of the parties included earlier, such as Liberales Forum (Austria), Liberal Party of Sri Lanka, Liberal Demokrat Parti (Turkey) or Liberal Party (United Kingdom) haven't been represented in the parliament lately, and aren't likely to enter the parliament any time soon.

Liberal Democratic Party of Afghanistan - Is it a potential parliamentary party? Too early to say, as it is in the case of most Afgan parties. We'll see in the first general elections. However, it seems to get some kind of support from Germany.

Unión del Centro Democrático de Avellaneda - Why is it liberal? See its site http://www.ucedeavellaneda.com.ar/ an the long introduction to liberalism. I doubt it would be there, if they wouldn't consider themselves liberal.

Liberal Party (Hong Kong) the character of the party might be disputed, but I have't seen good arguments for it being conservative. Perhaps the American "liberals" think that supporting free markets is conservative, but they don't have a copy right to the label "liberal".

As I have earlier read the site of the Indian Liberal Group, it prepares to form a liberal party, see http://www.liberalsindia.com/ Swatantra Bharat Party - see their site http://www.swatantrabharatparty.org/ , doesn't seem to be defunct to me.

Partito Liberale (Italy): Isn't in the parliament, true, but that is true for Federazione dei Liberali, as well. I have impression that it isn't in the Berlusconi coalition anymore, but even if it would, so what? There is two big coalition in Italy, both including both socialist, christian democratic and conservative parties. It is just a matter of preference, which you think is a smaller evil.

Jiyu Rengo: Supports free market and wants to improve for instance the position of women in the society, what's conservative about that? Perhaps the American "liberals" think that supporting free markets is conservative, but they don't have a copy right to the label "liberal".

Lao Liberal Democratic Party, see their site http://www.laofreedom.com/ , which seems to have been updated last time September 05, 2004. Is this a site of a defunct party?

The Liberal People's Party (Norway) and other libertarians, they are actually just one streaming of liberalism, similar to the way that the communists and social democrats are streamings of socialism. If a libertarian party chooses to identify itself as liberal, it has as much to do so as for instance social liberals. Anyway, if libertarians aren't considered to be liberals, why is Movimiento Libertario (Costa Rica) included?

G17 plus, it isn't the only liberal party which has joined EPP. For instance, European Democrats (Czech Rpublic), listed in this page, are part of the EPP group in EP, and earlier UW (Poland) and ODA (Czech Republic) and US-DEU (Czech Republic) have been members of EPP. However, as many of these examples prove, a liberal party which have joined EPP doesn't necessarily feel at home there for long.

Thanks for your arguments. I will certainly consider your remarks. I think that I can make in the reworking a split between parliamentary and non-parliamentary parties. That would also mean that some parties which are now in the lsit would move to non-parliamentary parties. Then Libertarians is - see the discussion in the article liberalism - not considered to be liberal but an own theory sharing the same roots. BTW I am not an American liberal, but a party that was for a long time against change of the Hong Kong constitution (abolishing indirect parliamentary elections) cannot considered to be liberal at all. Striving after a free market is not enough to be considered liberal, since liberalism includes more. E.g. The British conservatives, certainly not a liberal party, or the German christian democrats strive after a free market, but they are not liberals. The Movimiento Libertario is included since it is affiliated to the Liberal International (and as far as I know not to any international libertarian organisation). These are some first remarks, I will work on it. -- Gangulf 17:41, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC) B.T.W. Why do you operate without a loging, it makes discussing easier if tou would create your own account.

The reason why Movimiento Libertario is affiliated to the Liberal International and not to any international libertarian organisation is probably that there isn't any international organisation for libertarian parties, though there is a couple of international organisations for libertarian individuals. I'm sure that LI would be the first choice for any libertarian party, which would be considering to join an international organisation for parties.

The term "libertarian" was first adopted by North American free market libertarians, who couldn't use the term "liberal" anymore, because it had become to mean the same as "Left" in North America. Therefore in the North America, the term "libertarian" is broader than in Europe, and almost identical to what is called "market liberal" in Europe. See for instance Cato Institute's page, "How to label Cato Institute". In Europe the term "libertarian" is used only about what would be called "hard core libertarian" in the North America. For the history of the word see http://web.archive.org/web/20031121153638/www.daft.com/~rab/liberty/history/index.html

According to my knowledge the Hong Kong Liberal party is for broadening the democracy in Hong Kong, though it is rather careful about its policy towards Bejing.

But anyway, I think that it is

I agree, that liberalism is more than just free markets - but free markets are a vital part of classical liberalism, and therefore supporting free markets doesn't make a party illiberal. As for the German christian democrats, I don't see how they would strive after a free market. Maybe they have a market friendly wing somewhere, but there is also strong support for more state interventions, and the FDP is more market friendly anyway.

I don't see any other reason why certain centrist parties are included than that somebody considers that being critical towards market economy is liberal. see for instance this article about the Centre Party of Estonia http://www.ce-review.org/00/13/amber13.html . And the Centre Party of Finland has never been seen as a liberal party by the Finnish population, as its most central policy has been to advocate more subsidies for the farmers. And when the registration of the same-sex relationships was voted in the Finnish parliament, even more of the MPs of the conservative National Coalition party voted for than of the MPs of the Centre Party. They are actually both conservative, but the Centre Party has more support in the countryside while the National Coalition is mainly supported in cities. When LI accepted Centre Party as a member in the end of eighties, it was argued that LI should be broadened as an international organisation of liberal 'and' centrist parties. This means, that liberal is not same as centrist. However, now LI's policy is to claim that all its members are liberal, even those which were accepted in as centrist parties. This doesn't seem to be very honest to me.

Creating my own account seems a bit complicated, especially since I'm not planning to bind myself to wikipedia for a long period.

Reworked list

[edit]

The reworked list will be published very soon. In this list the following parties are not listed anymore:

Coalition of French tax payers - see http://decrypt.politique.free.fr/partis/rcf/index.shtml . This is a leftist resource, which easily labels right of centre parties as "facho", and as it is itself situated in extreme left, it calls even moderate right as "extreme right". However, even it recognises that Coalition of French tax payers is liberal, not "facho". Compare to some other right of centre parties.

But what makes it a liberal party. The mentioning at this site that it is a liberal party is for me not good enough. What is the program of the party? I have serious doubts -- Gangulf 15:15, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
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