Liberal Democratic Party

Liberal Democratic Party and Liberal Democrats have been names for dozens of political parties around the world that usually have the ideology of liberal democracy.

Active parties

Former parties

See also

Democrat Party

Democrat Party may refer to:

It is also an epithet for the Democratic Party (United States); see Democrat Party (epithet) for the history and controversy of this phrase.

See also

Liberal democracy

Liberal democracy is a political ideology and a form of government in which representative democracy operates under the principles of liberalism. It is characterised by fair, free, and competitive elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and political freedoms for all people. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either formally written or uncodified, to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. After a period of sustained expansion throughout the 20th century, liberal democracy became the predominant political system in the world.

A liberal democracy may take various constitutional forms: it may be a constitutional republic (France, India, the United States) or a constitutional monarchy (Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom). It may have a presidential system (Indonesia, the United States), a semi-presidential system (France, Taiwan), or a parliamentary system (India, Italy, the United Kingdom).

Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats (often referred to as the Lib Dems) are a liberal political party in the United Kingdom that was formed in 1988 by a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The two parties had previously formed the electoral SDP–Liberal Alliance for seven years prior.

From their first UK General Election in 1987 until the election of 2015, the Liberal Democrats were the third party in the House of Commons winning between 46 and 62 MPs. At the 2010 general election, under the leadership of Nick Clegg who had been elected leader in 2007, the Liberal Democrats won 57 seats, again making them the third-largest party in the House of Commons behind the Conservatives with 307 and Labour with 258. However, with no party having an overall majority, the Liberal Democrats agreed to join a coalition government with the Conservative Party with Clegg becoming Deputy Prime Minister and other Liberal Democrats taking up ministerial positions.

At the 2015 general election, the party was reduced to just eight Members of Parliament, being replaced as third party by the Scottish National Party which had 56 MPs elected. Nick Clegg resigned as leader and Tim Farron won the subsequent leadership election.

Political party

A political party is a group of people who come together to contest elections and hold power in the government. They agree on some policies and programmes for the society with a view to promote the collective good or to further their supporters' interests.

While there is some international commonality in the way political parties are recognized, and in how they operate, there are often many differences, and some are significant. Many political parties have an ideological core, but some do not, and many represent very different ideologies than they did when first founded. In democracies, political parties are elected by the electorate to run a government. Many countries have numerous powerful political parties, such as Germany and India and some nations have one-party systems, such as China. The United States is a two-party system, with its two most powerful parties being the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

Historical dimensions

Political factions

The first political factions, cohering around a basic, if fluid, set of principles emerged from the Exclusion Crisis and Glorious Revolution in late-17th-century England. The Whigs supported Protestant constitutional monarchy against absolute rule and the Tories, originating in the Royalist (or "Cavalier") faction of the English Civil War, were conservative royalist supporters of a strong monarchy as a counterbalance to the republican tendencies of Whigs, who were the dominant political faction for most of the first half of the 18th century; they supported the Hanoverian succession of 1715 against the Jacobite supporters of the deposed Roman Catholic Stuart dynasty and were able to purge Tory politicians from important government positions after the failed Jacobite rising of 1715. The leader of the Whigs was Robert Walpole, who maintained control of the government in the period 1721–1742; his protégé was Henry Pelham (1743–1754).