Liberal parties

This article gives information on liberalism worldwide. It is an overview of parties that adhere to some form of liberalism and is therefore a list of liberal parties around the world.

The definition of liberal party is highly debatable. In the list below, it is defined as a political party that adheres to the basic principles of political liberalism. This is a broad political current, including left-wing, centrist and right-wing elements. All liberal parties emphasise individual rights, but they differ in their opinion on an active role for the state. This list includes parties of different character, ranging from classical liberalism to social liberalism, conservative liberalism to national liberalism.

Several conservative and/or Christian-democratic parties, such as the British Conservative Party, Germany's Christian Democratic Union and Spain's People's Party, are also considered to be liberal leaning or have strong liberal conservative and/or classical liberal factions, whereas some conservative parties, such as Poland's Law and Justice and Hungary's Fidesz, similar to social-democratic parties, favour more state intervention and harbour more of a distrust of the free market/free market solutions and therefore cannot be considered liberal in any conventional form. Conversely, some social-democratic parties, such as the British Labour Party and the Italian Democratic Party, include liberal elements. Social liberalism and social conservatism are not mutually exclusive either, in fact some parties espouse socially liberal economic policies, while maintaining more socially conservative or traditionalist views on society: examples of this include Finland's Centre Party (see also Nordic agrarian parties) and Ireland's Fianna Fáil, both members of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party (ALDE Party). In the United States, the two major political forces, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, are to some extent, liberal (see Liberalism in the United States and Modern liberalism in the United States).

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