party, political, organization whose aim is to gain control of the government apparatus, usually through the election of its candidates to public office. Political parties take many forms, but their main functions are similar: to supply personnel for government positions; to organize these personnel around the formation and implementation of public policy; and to serve in a mediating role between individuals and their government. Political parties are as old as organized political systems. For example, many of the ancient Greek city-states had organized, competitive parties. Political parties have been organized for various reasons: to support a particular political figure, to advance a particular policy or a general ideological stand, to aid politically certain groups or sections of society, or merely to combine for short-term political advantage. Political parties have also been organized in various ways; in some, control is exercised by a small central elite, either elected or self-perpetuating, while in others, power is decentralized, with candidate picking and decision making spread among local party units. The modern mass political party has taken shape in the last century, along with the rise of democratic ideology, universal suffrage, nationalism, and more effective means of communication. Such a party is commonly categorized by the type of party system in which it operates. In a noncompetitive or one-party system, the party is often employed as part of the governing apparatus, with the functions of maintaining public support for the regime, encouraging popular participation in government programs, and alerting the government to changes in public opinion. In competitive systems, a distinction may be made between two-party systems, which seem to encourage a party strategy of moderation and compromise aimed at obtaining a majority vote, and multiparty systems, where there is less compromise and where a party's strategy emphasizes retaining the support of its core voters. In general, however, the structure and behavior of a particular country's political parties depends most heavily on the country's political and cultural history.

Whig party, one of the two major political parties of the United States in the second quarter of the 19th cent.

Origins

As a party it did not exist before 1834, but its nucleus was formed in 1824 when the adherents of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay joined forces against Andrew Jackson. This coalition, which later called itself the National Republican party, increased in strength after the election of Jackson in 1828 and was joined in opposition to the President by other smaller parties, the most notable being the Anti-Masonic party. By 1832, Jackson had also earned the enmity of such diverse groups as states' rights advocates in the South, proponents of internal improvements in the West, and businessmen and friends of the Bank of the United States in the East. This opposition was built up and correlated by Henry Clay in the election of 1832. Two years later, in 1834, all the various groups were combined in a loose alliance.

Party Successes

In the 1836 presidential election the Whigs were not unified or strong enough to join behind a single presidential candidate; instead several Whig candidates ran for office. The most prominent were Daniel Webster in New England, William Henry Harrison in the Northwest, and Hugh Lawson White in the Southwest. The election went to the Democrat, Martin Van Buren, but in opposition the Whigs grew steadily stronger.

The two great leaders of the party were Clay and Webster, but neither was ever to head a victorious national ticket. This failure was partly a result of the sectional variations in the party, which had only one common aim, opposition to the Democrats, and partly a result of the power held by intraparty forces opposed to them, including the political bosses of New York, Thurlow Weed and William Seward. The party went on to victory in 1840 with the rousing "Log Cabin and Hard Cider" campaign, which put William H. Harrison in the White House. Harrison died after only one month in office and was succeeded by his Vice President, John Tyler of Virginia.

A definite break now ensued between Tyler and the Whig leaders in Congress—a break that illustrated the Whig philosophy of government. The Whigs had originated in objection to what they considered the excessive power of the executive branch under Andrew Jackson. To them the legislative branch of the government represented the wishes of the people, and the task of the executive was to serve as the enforcing agent of the legislative branch. When Tyler ignored the counsel of his cabinet and vetoed bills that sought to reestablish the Bank of the United States, about 50 Whig members of Congress met in caucus and read Tyler out of the party. At the behest of Clay the entire cabinet resigned; even Webster retired after completing the Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1843).

Clay became the standard-bearer in 1844 but was defeated by James K. Polk. In 1848, Weed and his associates swung the nomination from Webster and Clay to Zachary Taylor, who had gained wide popularity as a commander in the Mexican War. This move temporarily prevented a division of the party, and although Taylor died while Clay was formulating the Compromise of 1850 in Congress, Millard Fillmore, his Vice President and presidential successor, kept the faith of the Whig party.

Disintegration

By the time Fillmore had succeeded to the presidency, the disintegration of the party was already manifest; in 1848 several important Whigs joined the new Free-Soil party, along with the abolitionists. In New England a bitter struggle developed between antislavery "Conscience Whigs" and proslavery "Cotton Whigs," in other places between "lower law" Whigs and "higher law" Whigs (the term "higher law" had originated from a famous speech by William H. Seward, who declared that there was a higher law than the Constitution).

In the election of 1852, the party was torn wide open by sectional interests. Both Clay and Webster died during the campaign, and Winfield Scott, the Whig presidential candidate, won only 42 electoral votes. This brought about a quick end to the party, and its remnants gravitated toward other parties. The newly formed (1854) Republican party and the sharply divided Democratic party absorbed the largest segments. Other Whigs, led by Fillmore, drifted into the Know-Nothing movement.

Union party, in American history.

1 Coalition of Republicans and War Democrats in the election of 1864. Abraham Lincoln was renominated for President with Andrew Johnson, the Democratic war governor of Tennessee, as his running mate. The Union party was hardly more than a name; very few Democrats were attracted, and the party reverted to its Republican designation in 1868.

2 In 1936 various radical groups discontented with the New Deal formed the Union party at a convention in Cleveland, Ohio. Father Charles E. Coughlin, Dr. Francis E. Townsend, and Gerald L. K. Smith, who had succeeded the recently assassinated Huey Long as the leader of the Share-the-Wealth movement, were the prime movers in the new party. William Lemke, a Republican congressman from North Dakota, was put forward as presidential nominee, and Thomas C. O'Brien of Boston, a labor lawyer, was nominated for Vice President. Although some believed that the Union ticket might deprive Franklin Delano Roosevelt of many normally Democratic votes, Lemke failed to get on the ballot in many states and polled only 882,000 votes. The strange coalition that had created the Union party fell apart immediately, and the party disappeared.

Spartacus party or Spartacists, radical group of German Socialists, formed c.Mar., 1916, and led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. The name was derived from the pseudonym Spartacus used by Liebknecht in his pamphlets denouncing World War I, the government, and the majority section of the Social Democratic party; the name was used to typify the modern wage slave in revolt like the Roman gladiator. The Spartacists, demanding the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat by mass action, gathered followers among the workingmen. After the overthrow of the German emperor, William II (Nov., 1918), the Spartacists continued to oppose the government, then composed of Majority Socialists and Independent Socialists, and headed by President Friedrich Ebert. The Spartacists launched a press campaign against the government and engaged in sporadic acts of terrorism. At an organizational meeting (Dec. 29, 1918-Jan. 1, 1919), the Spartacists officially transformed themselves into the German Communist party, and on Jan. 5, 1919, a Communist revolt broke out in Berlin. A general strike was proclaimed (Jan. 6) and the rebels occupied a number of government buildings. Gustav Noske was sent to Berlin to put down the revolt. He marched on the occupied part of the city and, by Jan. 13, had virtually defeated the Communists. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were arrested (Jan. 15) and brutally murdered by counterrevolutionary volunteers on the pretense that the two socialists had attempted to escape.

Socialist party, in U.S. history, political party formed to promote public control of the means of production and distribution. In 1898 the Social Democratic party was formed by a group led by Eugene V. Debs and Victor Berger. Two years later, Debs ran for president with the support of the more moderate wing of the Socialist Labor party, and in 1901 this group, led by Morris Hillquit, united with the Social Democratic party to form the Socialist party. The new party differed from the more radical Socialist Labor party in favoring an evolutionary, as opposed to revolutionary, socialism, and it soon outsized the older organization.

The Socialist party did not show much electoral strength until 1910 and 1911, when its candidates won numerous state and local elections. In 1912, Debs received nearly 900,000 votes (6% of the votes cast) as the party's presidential candidate. The party reached its peak membership (nearly 120,000) in that year. Allan Benson ran for president in 1916, but his percentage of the national vote dropped to 3%. In 1917 the party opposed the American entry into World War I, with a small faction of dissenting prowar members seceding from the party. Debs and a number of others were arrested for their opposition to the war, although Debs ran for president in 1920 while imprisoned and received 920,000 votes. After serving part of his sentence he was pardoned by President Harding. Following the Russian Revolution, a substantial group within the party advocated that the organization drop its evolutionary and reformist position and work instead for the immediate overthrow of the capitalist system. In 1919 this faction withdrew from the party, thereby substantially weakening it, and formed the Communist party of the United States.

In 1924 the Socialist party supported the Progressive party candidate for president, Robert La Follette, but in 1928 it once again nominated its own candidate, Norman Thomas, who ran in the following five presidential elections. The party lost much of its support during the 1930s when the New Deal came into effect, implementing many programs that the Socialists had long demanded. Since then the party's influence has steadily declined. In the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections Darlington Hoopes ran as the Socialist candidate, receiving fewer than 2,500 votes in the latter election. Although other minor parties espousing socialism currently participate in national elections, the Socialist party decided in 1960 to withdraw from national politics and concentrate on education. Since the 1950s the party has reorganized and changed its name several times, with the main group taking the name Social Democrats, USA in 1972.

Socialist Revolutionary party, in Russian history, an agrarian party founded by various Populist groups in 1901. Its program, adopted in 1906, called for the overthrow of the autocracy, the establishment of a classless society, self-determination for national minorities, and socialization of the land, which was to be distributed among the peasants on the basis of need. Viktor Chernov was a party leader. A secret "combat organization" within the party arranged political assassinations, notably that of V. K. Plehve (1904) and Grand Duke Sergei (1905). Originally made up of students and intellectuals, the party later gained support from the peasantry. In 1917 some Socialist Revolutionaries participated in the Petrograd soviet and in the provisional government. The party won a majority in the short-lived constituent assembly (Jan., 1918), which was disbanded by the Bolsheviks. By 1922 the party was suppressed.

Socialist Labor party, in the United States, begun in 1877 by New York City socialists. Its membership came largely from German-American workingmen. During the 1880s a national organization was established and the party concentrated, unsuccessfully, on electoral politics. The depression conditions of the 1890s brought it renewed strength, and, under the leadership of Daniel De Leon, a Marxist revolutionary, it emphasized militant labor activities and organized (1896) its own union. After many members who opposed the leadership of De Leon withdrew (1899) and joined the less militant Social Democratic party (see Socialist party), the Socialist Labor party did not regain its previous importance.

Social Democratic party (SDP), former British political party founded in 1981 to offer a centrist alternative to the more extreme positions of the then ruling Conservative party on the right and the opposition Labour party on the left. The SDP began with the defection of 12 Labour members of Parliament who opposed their party's leftward drift. The party joined in an electoral alliance with the Liberal party in 1981 and merged with the Liberals in 1988 to form the Social and Liberal Democratic party, now the Liberal Democrats. Some SDP members re-formed the party in 1988, but they disbanded in 1990.

Republican party, American political party.

Origins and Early Years

The name was first used by Thomas Jefferson's party, later called the Democratic Republican party or, simply, the Democratic party. The name reappeared in the 1850s, when the present-day Republican party was founded. At that time the crucial issue of the extension of slavery into the territories split the Democratic party and the Whig party, and opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 organized the new Republican party. Jackson, Mich., is called the birthplace of the party (July 6, 1854) and Joseph Medill is credited with having suggested its name, but these distinctions are also claimed for other places and other men.

By 1855 the new party was well launched in the North. Anti-slavery Whigs such as William Seward and Thurlow Weed were dominant in the new grouping, but elements of the Know-Nothing movement, together with the Free-Soil party, abolitionists, and anti-Nebraska Democrats also supplied strength. The party's national organization was perfected at Pittsburgh in Feb., 1856, and its first presidential candidate, John C. Frémont, made a creditable showing against victorious James Buchanan. The party opposed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the extension of slavery, denounced the Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott Case, and favored the admission of Kansas as a free state.

The Civil War and Reconstruction Years

Generally belligerent toward the South, the Republicans were regarded by Southerners with mingled hatred and fear as sectional tension increased. They were successful in the elections of 1858 and passed over their better-known leaders to nominate Abraham Lincoln in 1860. The party platform in 1860 included planks calling for a high protective tariff, free homesteads, and a transcontinental railroad; these were bids for support among Westerners, farmers, and eastern manufacturing interests.

Lincoln's victory over Stephen A. Douglas, John C. Breckinridge, and John Bell was the signal for the secession of the Southern states, and the Civil War followed. Union military failures early in the war and conservative opposition to such measures as the Emancipation Proclamation caused the party to lose ground in the Congressional elections of 1862. But despite mutterings against his leadership, Lincoln, renominated on the Union (Republican) ticket in 1864, defeated Gen. George B. McClellan.

Although a separate ticket headed by the radical Frémont withdrew before the election in 1864, the cleavage within the party between radicals and moderates widened as the war progressed. Radicals such as Benjamin F. Wade, Henry W. Davis, Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, and Edwin M. Stanton advocated a punitive policy for the South, while Lincoln and the moderates were inclined to leniency. The division was made complete when, after Lincoln's assassination, his successor, Andrew Johnson, adopted a moderate program of Reconstruction. Johnson, a Jacksonian Democrat from Tennessee, had been added to the ticket in 1864 to strengthen the idea of a Union party. Ultimately his policies and attempts to implement them antagonized his supporters among the moderate Republicans and paved the way for the triumph of the radicals in the congressional elections of 1866. The height of radical power was reached in 1868 with the impeachment of Johnson, which was defeated by only a one-vote margin.

The nomination of the war hero Ulysses S. Grant assured Republican success over the Democrats led by Horatio Seymour in the presidential election of 1868. The radicals were supreme under Grant, but their excesses and the open scandals of the administration created a new schism, leading to the formation of the Liberal Republican party. Its candidate, Horace Greeley, although supported by the Democrats, was not popular enough to defeat Grant in 1872, and corruption became even more widespread.

The election of 1876 indicated that radical Republicanism had lost much of its popular support. The Democratic candidate, Samuel J. Tilden, received a popular plurality of over 250,000 votes, but the disputed electoral votes of Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana, the only Southern states still under Republican control, were awarded to Rutherford B. Hayes, and the Republican was declared President-elect. With the election, however, Republican domination of the South and radical rule of the party were definitely ended.

The Late Nineteenth Century

In the period that followed, the two parties differed little in their programs. Each party had numerous almost irreconcilable factions, and each avoided taking any real stand on controversial issues, which were generally left to lesser political groups such as the Granger movement and the Greenback party. The Republicans favored a protective tariff and the Democrats a tariff for revenue only, but even this traditional distinction was not rigidly kept. However, the Republican tariff policy was the work of leaders of the new industrial capitalism, whose influence in party councils began to be strongly felt under Grant.

The Republican "old guard," led by Roscoe Conkling, while failing to secure a third nomination for Grant in 1880, nevertheless temporarily blocked the presidential aspirations of James G. Blaine. Another ex-Union general, James A. Garfield, was nominated and was elected over a Democratic general, Winfield S. Hancock. Assassinated shortly after taking office, Garfield was succeeded by Vice President Chester A. Arthur.

In these postwar elections, the party, always supported by the Grand Army of the Republic, denounced all Democrats as former Copperheads and claimed to have alone saved the Union. But "waving the bloody shirt," as this type of propaganda was styled, was not enough to elect Blaine in 1884. The reform wing of the party, led by Carl Schurz, deserted Blaine for the conservative Democrat Grover Cleveland, who was elected. This defection by the mugwumps illustrated the lack of real issues between the two parties; it was the man and not the party that counted. Benjamin Harrison defeated Cleveland in 1888 but lost to him in 1892. The growing Populist party, with its radical program, had a peculiar position in those elections, receiving in each section of the country the support of the party not in power.

McKinley through Coolidge

When, in 1896, the Democratic party was captured by the radicals under William Jennings Bryan, its presidential candidate in 1896, 1900, and 1908, the Republican party became openly the champion of the gold standard and conservative economic doctrines. The conservatives, skillfully guided by national chairman Marcus A. Hanna, won with William McKinley in 1896 and 1900, and under such leaders as Nelson W. Aldrich, Thomas B. Reed, Joseph G. Cannon, Thomas C. Platt, and Matthew S. Quay, the party prospered. Theodore Roosevelt, successor to the assassinated McKinley, easily defeated the conservative Democrat Alton B. Parker in 1904, and the vigorous foreign policy of his administration fostered the belief that the Republicans stood for the imperialism represented by the recent Spanish-American War.

Under Roosevelt's Republican successor and friend, William Howard Taft, "dollar diplomacy" flourished, but a new rift appeared in the party. Insurgents led by Senator Robert M. La Follette balked at the party's conservatism and when the regulars renominated Taft in 1912, most of the dissidents withdrew and in the Bull Moose convention chose Roosevelt to lead the new Progressive party ticket. Because of this division, the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, was elected President and, narrowly reelected in 1916 over Charles Evans Hughes, he served through World War I. The party, however, won the Congressional elections of 1918, and Republican opposition was a large factor in defeating Wilson's peace program. By straddling the issue of the League of Nations and calling for a return to "normalcy," the party easily elected Warren G. Harding in 1920. His administration rivaled Grant's for corruption, but after Harding died in office, his successor, Calvin Coolidge, was returned over John W. Davis and La Follette.

Depression and World War II

The Republican victory with Herbert C. Hoover in 1928 marked the first time since the end of Reconstruction that the party had carried states of the old Confederacy; this came about chiefly because the Democratic candidate, Alfred E. Smith, was a Roman Catholic and an opponent of prohibition. Hoover and the Republicans were blamed for the disastrous economic depression that soon enveloped the country, and the Democrats, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, were swept into office in 1932. The frustrated Republicans were never able to break the remarkable hold of Roosevelt and the New Deal on the electorate and regularly went down to defeat every four years, with Alfred M. Landon (1936), Wendell Willkie (1940), and Thomas E. Dewey (1944).

Isolationists held the upper hand in the party before World War II, and in 1940 two Republicans, Henry L. Stimson and Frank Knox, were virtually read out of the party for accepting posts in Roosevelt's cabinet. But the party supported the nation's war effort and after the war, led by Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, joined the Democratic administration in a bipartisan foreign policy. In 1948 the Republican party was supremely confident of defeating Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman. However, Dewey, the party's first unsuccessful candidate ever to be renominated, was defeated by a close margin.

Eisenhower and Nixon

In 1952, the more liberal element among the Republicans was able to deny the conservatives' choice, Robert A. Taft, choosing instead the popular war hero, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower as their presidential nominee. Campaigning against the domestic policy of the Truman administration and its prosecution of the war in Korea, Eisenhower swept to a landslide victory over the Democratic candidate, Adlai E. Stevenson. The domestic program of the Eisenhower adminstration was moderately conservative, and in foreign policy the internationalist approach of the previous Democratic administration was continued. Despite the President's overwhelming personal popularity and his landslide reelection over Stevenson in 1956, a feat that included carrying several Southern states for the second consecutive time, the Democrats retained control of Congress through the 1960 elections.

In 1960, an incumbent Vice President, Richard M. Nixon was nominated for president for the first time since 1836. Although the Republican party had become a minority in registration, Nixon failed by fewer than 200,000 votes to defeat John F. Kennedy. In 1964 the conservative wing of the party engineered the nomination of Senator Barry Goldwater, who was, however, defeated in a landslide by Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1968 the party rebounded and won a narrow victory with party stalwart Richard Nixon over Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey, who was handicapped by disaffection over the Vietnam War. In 1972, President Nixon was triumphantly reelected, defeating George McGovern on a record of favoring a strong defense with a limited détente with the Soviet Union and China, and a conservative domestic program featuring a decentralization of political power.

The party, however, suffered a series of massive setbacks with the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew upon his conviction for tax evasion and revelations of major White House involvement in the Watergate affair, which led finally to the resignation of President Nixon. Nixon's successor, Gerald R. Ford, attempted to disassociate the party from the scandals, but Watergate appeared to be a major factor in the substantial Republican losses in the 1974 elections and in the subsequent defeat of Ford by the Democrat Jimmy Carter.

The Reagan-Bush Years to the Present

In 1980, the conservative Ronald Reagan, a former supporter of Barry Goldwater, regained the presidency for the Republicans and reversed long-standing political trends by instituting a supply-side economic program of budget and tax cuts. He also advocated increased military spending and presided over the largest military buildup during peacetime in American history. The Iran-contra affair, which broke in late 1986, marred the last years of his tenure, though his vice-president, George H. W. Bush, was nonetheless able to defeat the Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis, in the 1988 election.

Bush was generally recognized as strong on foreign policy. He was widely lauded for his role in orchestrating the coalition of forces against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War. He also largely continued Reagan's policy toward the Soviet Union. On the domestic side, however, Bush's administration was perceived as being slow to respond to such problems as stagnant economic growth, rising unemployment, and the unaffordability of health care for many Americans. Bush's high popularity after the Persian Gulf War dropped rapidly, and he lost the 1992 presidential election to the Democrat, Arkansas's Governor Bill Clinton.

In the 1994 congressional and state elections, however, the Republican party scored major victories and increased its hold in the South. Republicans unseated long-time Democratic incumbents, winning control of both houses of Congress (for the first time since the 1950s) and claiming several governorships. Newt Gingrich, who spearheaded the Republicans' congressional election campaign with his conservative "Contract with America" program, became speaker of the House. While bills were passed on the key program components, many items were thwarted or defeated in Congress or by the president.

The 1996 elections saw incumbents generally retain their offices. Former Senate majority leader Bob Dole won the Republican nomination for the presidency, but he and his running mate, Jack Kemp, were never able to reduce significantly President Clinton's substantial lead. In the House and Senate, Republicans retained their majorities, slightly diminished in the former and slightly increased in the latter. The 1998 mid-term elections saw the Republican margin in the House reduced, despite expectations that they would benefit from the effects of the Lewinsky scandal; the results led to Gingrich's resignation from office.

In the 2000 elections, the party's presidential nominee, George W. Bush appeared generally to lead in the polls in what ultimately became a popular-vote loss to Democrat Al Gore. Despite not winning the popular vote. Bush secured the presidency with a victory in the electoral college when he won Florida by an extremely narrow margin and outlasted Gore's unsuccessful court challenge of the Florida vote-counting process. The party did not fair as well in other races for national office, and the Democrats made gains in Congress, although the Republicans retained control there.

The party lost control of the Senate as a result of a defection in mid-2001, but regained it after the Nov., 2002, elections. In 2004, Bush was renominated without opposition, and he subsequently soundly defeated the Democratic nominee, John Kerry. The Republicans also increased their majorities in both houses of Congress, as retiring Senate Democrats from the South were replaced by Republicans. Public discontent with congressional scandals and the war in Iraq led to reversals in the congressional elections of 2006, however, and the party lost control of both houses of Congress, albeit narrowly in the Senate.

Reform party, in Canada: see Canadian Alliance.

Reform party, in the United States, political party founded in 1995 by H. Ross Perot as an alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties. The Reform party's aims originally included mandating high ethical standards for the president and Congress, balancing the budget, enacting term limits, enacting an equitable tax code, and achieving campaign finance and other electoral reforms. In 1996 the party nominated Perot for the presidency, with Patrick Choate as his running mate, but with 8% of the vote Perot did not fare as well as he had in 1992.

After Perot's defeat, the party lapsed into comparative obscurity. It revived with the first election of one of its candidates to a major office—ex-professional wrestler Jesse Ventura, who won the Minnesota governorship in 1998. Ventura became the party's de facto leader, but the Perot contingent continued to have a substantial influence on its policies and direction. The Perot faction was dealt a blow at the party's national convention in 1999 when the Ventura-backed candidate, John J. "Jack" Gargan, was elected chairman, but tensions between Perot and Ventura supporters led Ventura to resign from the party early in 2000 and resulted in Gargan's ouster as chairman. Tension continued into 2002, when several state parties broke their ties with the national party.

Although many of its members called the party centrist, its political ideology was not sharply defined by 1999, and a broad spectrum of candidates was considered for its 2000 presidential nomination. Patrick J. Buchanan, a strongly conservative polemicist and former Republican, captured much of the party's machine from the old guard aligned with Perot and secured the nomination. Buchanan chose African-American Ezola Foster as his running mate and moved the party to the extreme right on many issues. The Perot faction held their own convention and nominated John Hagelin for president, but Buchanan was recognized as the nominee by the Federal Election Commission. Both candidates fizzled at the polls, winning barely .5% of the vote combined. In 2004 the party endorsed independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader.

Prohibition party, in U.S. history, minor political party formed (1869) for the legislative prohibition of the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages. The temperance movement was in existence as early as 1800, but it was not until 1867 that its leaders marshaled their forces to establish a separate political party to campaign for prohibition. The result was the organization (Sept., 1869) of the Prohibition party at a convention in Chicago attended by delegates from 20 states. The failure of the temperance cause to gain active support from the major political parties, the failure of public officials to enforce existing local prohibition laws in several states, and the nationwide founding of the United States Brewers' Association were factors contributing to the creation of the Prohibition party. Before entering a presidential race, the Prohibition party entered elections in nine states during the period from 1869 to 1871. The first three presidential candidates—James Black (1872), Green C. Smith (1876), and Neal Dow (1880)—each polled a very small number of votes. Although the central issue of the party was prohibition, typical party platforms included woman suffrage, free public education, prohibition of gambling, and prison reform. In 1882 the party made sizable gains in state elections, and in 1884 a vigorous presidential campaign by John P. St. John resulted in the party's first large popular vote (150,626). Of these votes, 25,000 came from New York state, which the Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland carried by fewer than 1,200 votes. As most of St. John's support came from Republicans angered at the comtemptuous treatment accorded a temperance petition at their national convention, the Prohibitionists helped swing a key state to Cleveland. Four years later the temperance leader Clinton B. Fisk received almost 250,000 votes. But the peak of popular support was reached in 1892, when John Bidwell won almost 265,000 votes. The popularity of the temperance cause had been greatly furthered by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (1874), and later by the Anti-Saloon League (1893), despite the latter's nonpartisan political position. Although the Prohibition party never received a large percentage of the national vote, its influence on public policy far outweighed its electoral strength. This can be seen in state platform declarations of the major parties at this time and in the institution of prohibition by the Eighteenth Amendment. Although the Prohibition party continues to run presidential candidates, the repeal of prohibition by the Twenty-first Amendment had a decidedly weakening effect on the party.

Progressive party, in U.S. history, the name of three political organizations, active, respectively, in the presidential elections of 1912, 1924, and 1948.

Election of 1912

Republican insurgents dissatisfied with the conservative administration of President William Howard Taft formed (Jan., 1911) the National Progressive Republican League. Senator Robert M. La Follette was their choice for the Republican presidential nomination in 1912 until former President Theodore Roosevelt, at odds with his old friend Taft for various personal and political reasons, threw his "hat into the ring" (Feb. 24, 1912). The regular Republicans, however, controlled the national convention at Chicago (June) and renominated Taft, whereupon the Roosevelt supporters organized the new Progressive party (the Bull Moose party) and nominated, also at Chicago (August), Roosevelt for President and Hiram W. Johnson for Vice President. The Progressive platform called for the direct election of U.S. Senators, the initiative, referendum, and recall, woman suffrage, reduction of the tariff, and many social reforms. As a result of the split in Republican ranks, Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic candidate, won, but Roosevelt, who received 88 electoral votes and over 4 million popular votes, fared better than Taft. The party maintained its organization until 1916, when, after Roosevelt declined another nomination, most Progressives supported the Republican presidential candidate, Charles Evans Hughes.

Election of 1924

The success of the Conference for Progressive Political Action, sponsored by the railroad brotherhoods, in the congressional elections of 1922 led to the nomination at Cleveland in 1924 of another Progressive party ticket, with La Follette for President and Burton K. Wheeler for Vice President. La Follette's program, supported by the American Federation of Labor, the Socialist and Farmer-Labor parties, and most other non-Communist left-wing groups, called for public control and conservation of natural resources, abolition of child labor, recognition of the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively, and the breakup of monopolies. In the Republican landslide that followed, La Follette won only the 13 electoral votes of Wisconsin, but polled nearly 5 million popular votes. Under La Follette's sons, Robert M., Jr., and Philip F., the Progressives continued strong in Wisconsin until 1938, when they were defeated by the Republicans. In 1946 the Wisconsin party dissolved itself and joined the Republicans.

Election of 1948

At Philadelphia in July, 1948, a new third party, organized as a challenge to the Democratic party, adopted the name Progressive and nominated Henry A. Wallace for President and Senator Glen H. Taylor for Vice President. Endorsed by the Communist party and by the American Labor party of New York state, the Progressive party accused the Truman administration of failing to cooperate with the Soviet Union to end the cold war and advocated repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act and reestablishment of wartime price controls. Its candidates won no electoral votes and only slightly more than 1 million popular votes as Truman defeated Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican candidate, by a close margin.

Progressive Conservative party, former Canadian political party, formed in 1942 by the merger of the Progressive and Conservative parties. Beginning with the first Canadian prime minister, John A. Macdonald in 1867, the Conservative party dominated Canadian politics for much of the first three decades after confederation in 1867. The Conservative party's commitments to a strong confederation, national economic development, and close ties to Britain were continued by subsequent Conservative prime ministers, John J. C. Abbott, John S. D. Thompson, Mackenzie Bowell, and Charles Tupper. Reactions to the pro-British direction of Conservative policy and the execution of French-Canadian rebel Louis Riel led to a decline in Conservative party fortunes in Quebec, and the start of a long period of Liberal party dominance.

In the 1920s, Conservative prime ministers Robert Borden and Arthur Meighen managed to forge a coalition of groups alienated by Liberal party policies, but opposition by Quebec to the conscription policy during World War I led to a decline in Conservative support. During the Great Depression Richard B. Bennett formed a Conservative government, though the persistence of the depression led to its eventual collapse. In 1942, incorporating elements of the old Progressive party, the Conservative party adopted the label Progressive Conservative party and advocated a more reform-minded program, but this did little to change the party's national fortunes.

In John Diefenbaker, prime minister from 1957 to 1963, the Progressive Conservative party found a charismatic figure who helped forge a new base for the party in the western provinces. The growing problem of Quebec autonomy contributed to another two decades of Liberal government; Joe Clark, party leader from 1976 to 1983, was briefly prime minister in 1979. From 1986, the Progressive Conservative party under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney attempted to resolve the delicate constitutional issues of provincial status in the failed Meech Lake Accords and unsuccessful constitutional proposals, and negotiated a free trade agreement (1987) with the United States. The unpopularity of his economic policies, however led Mulroney to resign in 1993.

Kim Campbell, the party's and Canada's first female leader, briefly governed and led the party (1993) before she and all but two of the party's parliamentary candidates were rejected at the polls. She was succeeded as party leader by Jean Charest, who led the national party to a partial recovery in the 1997 elections, but the party's full recovery was hampered by the emergence of the Reform party (later the Canadian Alliance). Joe Clark again became the party's leader in 1998. In 2000 the party won only 12 seats in Parliament, making it the smallest of the five represented parties. although it garnered the third largest bloc of popular votes. Peter MacKay succeeded Joe Clark as party leader in 2003, and subsequently led the national party into a merger with the Canadian Alliance to form the Conservative party of Canada.

Populist party, in U.S. history, political party formed primarily to express the agrarian protest of the late 19th cent. In some states the party was known as the People's party.

Formation of the Party

During the Panic of 1873 agricultural prices in the United States began to decline. The economic welfare of farmers suffered badly; many believed that the management of currency was at fault and that the government's currency policy was determined by Eastern bankers and industrialists. After attempts at independent political action failed (see Greenback party), loosely knit confederations called Farmers' Alliances were formed during the 1880s. Separate organizations were founded in the North and South, and Southern blacks organized their own alliances.

The Farmers' Alliances agitated for railroad regulation, tax reform, and unlimited coinage of silver and attempted to influence the established political parties. Growth was so rapid, however, that interest in a third party began to increase; in 1891 delegates from farm and labor organizations met in Cincinnati. No decision was made to form a political party, but when the Republican and Democratic parties both straddled the currency question at the 1892 presidential conventions, a convention was held at Omaha, and the Populist party was formed (1892).

Goals

The party adopted a platform calling for free coinage of silver, abolition of national banks, a subtreasury scheme or some similar system, a graduated income tax, plenty of paper money, government ownership of all forms of transportation and communication, election of Senators by direct vote of the people, nonownership of land by foreigners, civil service reform, a working day of eight hours, postal banks, pensions, revision of the law of contracts, and reform of immigration regulations. The goal of the Populists in 1892 was no less than that of replacing the Democrats as the nation's second party by forming an alliance of the farmers of the West and South with the industrial workers of the East. James B. Weaver was the Populist candidate for President that year, and he polled over 1,041,000 votes. The Populist votes in the 1894 congressional elections increased to 1,471,000 as the party gained momentum.

Dissolution

In 1896, while the Republican party adhered to the "sound money" platform, the Populists kept intact their platform of 1892; the Democratic party, however, adopted the plank of free coinage of silver and nominated William Jennings Bryan for President. Although the Populists tried to retain their independence by repudiating the Democratic vice presidential candidate, the Democratic party, helped by the eloquence of Bryan, captured the bulk of the Populist votes in 1896. The 1896 election undermined agrarian insurgency, and a period of rapidly rising farm prices helped to bring about the dissolution of the Populist party. Another important factor in the failure of the party was its inability to effect a genuine urban-rural coalition; its program had little appeal for wage earners of the industrial East.

People's party: see Populist party.

New Democratic party (NDP), Canadian political party, founded in 1961 when the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) reorganized itself and entered into close ties with Canadian labor unions, especially the Canadian Labor Congress (CLC). The CCF, formed in 1932, began as a largely W Canadian federation of farm, labor, and socialist groups with a democratic socialist program of increased welfare measures, moderate nationalization, and government economic planning. It had some success, especially in western provinces, and was the majority party in Saskatchewan (1944-64). Since then the NDP has put less emphasis on specific socialist proposals in an attempt to broaden its appeal. Under the leadership of Thomas C. Douglas (1961-71), David Lewis (1971-75), Edward Broadbent (1977-89), and Audrey McLaughlin (1989-95, the first woman to head a Canadian national political party), the party improved its showing in E Canada, but its main strength remained in the west, where, in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, it formed provincial governments at various times in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia. In the early 1990s the NDP also held power in Ontario. Alexa McDonough became party leader in 1995; Jack Layton succeeded her in 2003. The elections of 1993, 1997, and 2000 saw its representation in Ottawa severely reduced, but 2004 and 2006 reversed that trend (though the NDP remained the smallest party in parliament).

National Republican party, in U.S. history, a short-lived political party opposed to Andrew Jackson. In the election of 1828, which Jackson won overwhelmingly, some of the supporters of his opponent, President John Quincy Adams, called themselves National Republicans. It was under this name that, following the lead of the Anti-Masonic party, they held a national nominating convention at Baltimore in Dec., 1831, and chose Henry Clay to oppose Jackson in the 1832 election. The adherents of the National Republican party constituted a mixture of industrialists, business leaders, farmers, laborers, and mechanics, who believed in Clay's program of high tariffs, internal improvements, and a national bank. The main issue of the campaign was Jackson's veto of the second Bank of the United States. Clay was badly beaten, and by 1836 the National Republicans had combined with other groups opposed to Jackson to form the Whig party.

Liberty party, in U.S. history, an antislavery political organization founded in 1840. It was formed by those abolitionists, under the leadership of James G. Birney and Gerrit Smith, who repudiated William Lloyd Garrison's nonpolitical stand. Birney, their presidential candidate in 1840, received a little more than 7,000 votes. Because of better local organization and the issue of the annexation of Texas, he polled more than 60,000 votes in 1844, drawing enough support away from Henry Clay in New York state to throw the presidency to James K. Polk. The party remained strong in local elections in 1846, but in 1848 it withdrew its nominee, John P. Hale, and united with antislavery Whigs and Democrats to form the stronger Free-Soil party.

Liberal party, former British political party, the dominant political party in Great Britain for much of the period from the mid-1800s to World War I.

Origins

The Liberal party was an outgrowth of the Whig party that, after the Reform Bill of 1832 (see Reform Acts), joined with the bulk of enfranchised industrialists and business classes to form a political alliance that, over the next few decades, came to be called the Liberal party. Much of the Liberal program was formulated by an important manufacturing middle-class element of the party known as the Radicals, who were strongly influenced by Jeremy Bentham. The Liberals distinguishing policies included free trade, low budgets, and religious liberty. Their anti-imperialism reflected confidence in Britain's economic supremacy. Most Liberals believed in the economic doctrines of laissez-faire and thought labor unions, factory acts, and substantial poor relief a threat to rapid industrialization.

Achievements in Power

Lord John Russell is credited with originating the party's name, and his government of 1846 is sometimes described as the first Liberal ministry. Whig peers like Lord Melbourne and Lord Palmerston, upholding the principle of aristocratic government, prevented further franchise reforms for over 30 years after the 1832 act. But Lord John Russell, William Gladstone, and John Bright (one of the Radicals) fought stubbornly for electoral reforms, even though the newly enfranchised masses might then insist on labor legislation opposed by the party. These leaders provided the impetus for the Reform Bill that their Conservative opponents passed in 1867.

The laissez-faire outlook and hegemony of the Liberal party were challenged in the last quarter of the 19th cent. When the party's program of electoral reform reached completion in 1884, Gladstone took up Irish Home Rule as a new cause. However, during the long period of depression from 1873 to 1893, many businessmen began to demand closer imperial ties. Because of the Home Rule issue, a large segment of businessmen, led by Joseph Chamberlain, along with English owners of Irish land, left the Liberal party in 1886 to form the Liberal-Unionists, who allied themselves with the Conservative party.

In losing office, the divided Liberals became stronger advocates of labor legislation. They came to depend more heavily upon the support of special groups like the Irish, labor, and nonconformists. The party was once more victorious in 1892 and again, under Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, in 1906. Herbert Asquith (see Oxford and Asquith, Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st earl of), a Liberal imperialist, became prime minister in 1908, to be followed by the flamboyant David Lloyd George during World War I.

Decline

By 1914 the Liberal government had passed substantial welfare legislation but, unwilling to adopt a full socialist program, the Liberals began to lose support to the new Labour party. The party's stubborn adherence to the doctrine of free trade, arguments between the Lloyd George and Asquith factions of the party, long years of depression, the Irish problem, growing labor radicalism, and the rise of a working-class party all account for the rapid postwar decline of the Liberals.

During the 1920s they were still a strong element in Parliament, and several, notably Sir John Simon, were members of the National government of the 1930s. During the 30s, however, their parliamentary representation fell rapidly, and in no election between the end of World War II and the 1980s did they return more than a handful of candidates. In 1981 the Liberal party entered into an alliance with the newly formed Social Democratic party; together they won 22 seats in the House of Commons in 1987. In 1988 the parties merged to become the Social and Liberal Democratic party (now the Liberal Democrats).

Liberal party, Canadian political party. Prior to confederation in 1867, reform parties advocating greater local participation in provincial governments, free trade, and increased separation of church and state existed in Canada West, Canada East, and the Maritime Provinces. After 1867 although the provincial reform parties dominated local politics in several provinces, they had problems establishing a viable national party. The only Liberal prime minister in the first three decades after Confederation was Alexander Mackenzie. The lack of a strong base in Quebec hampered national Liberal party efforts. However, opposition in Quebec to the execution of French-Canadian rebel Louis Riel, and the success of Wilfrid Laurier in moderating the traditional anticlericalism of the Quebec Liberal party, paved the way to national success. As prime minister at the turn of the century, Laurier provided the model for future Liberal party successes by forging a broad coalition based on an English-French alliance that appealed to middle-class interests. For most of the 20th cent., the Liberal party dominated Canadian politics. William Lyon Mackenzie King's long tenure as Liberal prime minister during most of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s successfully encompassed the diverse and sometimes contradictory interests of a wide English and French constituency. Under King's Liberal successor, Louis St. Laurent, the party lost most of its base in the western provinces. Under Lester Pearson, the party slowly rebuilt its electoral base, although for much of his tenure as prime minister in the 1960s he headed a minority government. Bilingualism, constitutional questions, and the status of Quebec dominated the tenure of Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who was succeeded briefly as prime minister by John Turner in 1984. Turner remained leader of the Liberal party until 1990, when he was briefly replaced by Herb Grey; later that year Jean Chrétien became Liberal party leader. In 1993 dissatisfaction with the economy returned the Liberals to power; they remained in power against a divided opposition after the 1997 and 2000 elections. Paul Martin became party leader and prime minister in 2003 and, despite being hurt by scandals, the Liberals remained in office as a minority government after the 2004 elections. In the 2006 elections the Liberals were again hurt by scandal. The Conservatives won a plurality of the seats, and Martin resigned as Liberal leader; Stéphane Dion succeeded him in the post.

Liberal party, in U.S. history, political party formed in 1944 in New York City by a group of anti-Communist trade unionists and liberals who withdrew from the American Labor party when that party became pro-Communist. Among those responsible for its creation was Reinhold Niebuhr. The original party platform called for a strong United Nations, extended civil rights, and support of the American trade-union movement. Rather than attempting to elect its own candidates, the Liberal party generally seeks to influence the candidate choice of the major parties by promises of support or nonsupport. Although the party operates almost entirely in New York state, its endorsement of presidential candidates is sometimes significant. In its first year of existence it was responsible for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's carrying New York state and in the 1960 presidential election it provided New York's margin of victory for John F. Kennedy. In state and local elections the party sometimes nominates its own candidates. In 1969, John Lindsay, having lost the Republican nomination, won reelection as mayor of New York City on the Liberal ticket; the Liberal party has also elected its own U.S. congressman, a president of the New York City Council, and numerous other local officials. Although the Liberal party has generally supported Democratic candidates, it claims to stand for broader social and economic reforms than the Democratic party. Criticized for having too close ties with the Democratic party, its support of John Lindsay, the Republican mayoral candidate in 1965, and of Republican Senator Jacob Javits, tended to quell such criticism. In 1980 it split the progressive vote when Alfonse D'Amato won the Republican endorsement and Javits ran as a Liberal. Since the 1980 election the party has largely declined in political importance in New York State.

Liberal Republican party, in U.S. history, organization formed in 1872 by Republicans discontented at the political corruption and the policies of President Grant's first administration. Other disaffected elements were drawn into the party. Among its leaders were Carl Schurz and B. Gratz Brown, both of Missouri, who had defeated the regular Republicans in the state election of 1870, Horace Greeley, Charles Sumner, and Lyman Trumbull. The party convention, held at Cincinnati in May, passed over Charles Francis Adams (1807-86), David Davis, and others to nominate Greeley for President; Brown was named for Vice President. In their convention at Baltimore, the Democrats also accepted these candidates. The party program called for civil service reform and an end to the strong Reconstruction program of the radical Republicans; so as not to offend the party's divergent segments, it avoided adopting a position on the tariff question. Greeley's nomination was not popular with many of the party leaders, who supported him without enthusiasm, and Grant was easily reelected.

Liberal Democratic party (LDP), Japanese political party. It began as the conservative Liberal party, which, under Shigeru Yoshida, became the dominant political force in Japan following World War II. In 1955 the Liberals merged with the newly created Japan Democratic party. Retaining control of the Japanese government for 38 years, the LDP supported Japan's alliance with the United States and fostered close links between Japanese business and government. Following charges of corruption in Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa's government, it lost its parliamentary majority in the 1993 elections, which put a coalition government in power. In spite of numerous defections by LDP members of parliament over the party's failure to enact political reform, it remained Japan's largest political party. Since 1994, when the LDP returned to power, it has been the senior partner in a series of coalition governments. Ryutaro Hashimoto became LDP leader in 1995, assuming the post of deputy prime minister in Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama's cabinet. Upon Murayama's resignation early in 1996, Hashimoto became prime minister; Keizo Obuchi succeeded Hashimoto as party leader and prime minister in 1998. When Obuchi was incapacitated by a severe stroke in 2000, Yoshiro Mori, secretary-general of the LDP, succeeded him as prime minister, but the unpopular Mori was replaced in less than a year by Junichiro Koizumi. Koizumi was succeeded as party leader in 2006 by Shinzo Abe and in 2007 by Yasuo Fukuda.

See also Postwar Japan under Japan.

Labour party, British political party, one of the two dominant parties in Great Britain since World War I.

Origins

The Labour party was founded in 1900 after several generations of preparatory trade union politics made possible by the Reform Bills of 1867 and 1884, which enfranchised urban workers. Although the Labour Representation League, organized in 1869, elected parliamentary representatives, they were absorbed into the Liberal party. A Marxist organization, the Social Democratic Federation, was founded by H. M. Hyndman in 1881; but more important for the history of the Labour party was the founding of the Fabian Society (1883) and the Independent Labour party (ILP; 1893). With the help of the Fabian Society and the Trades Union Congress, the ILP in 1900 set up the Labour Representation Committee, renamed the Labour party in 1906. The new party elected 29 members to Parliament in 1906; in the two elections of 1910 it elected 40 and 42. Its strength lay in the industrial North and in Welsh mining areas; the evolutionary socialism espoused by the Fabians was the dominant ideology.

1914 to 1945

At the outbreak of World War I, Ramsay MacDonald led a pacifist wing of the party, but the majority of the party supported the war effort, and the party's leader, Arthur Henderson, served in the wartime coalition governments. Until 1918 the party was distinctly a federation of trade unions and socialist groups and had no individual members. After the war economic depression, the growing political consciousness of the working classes, and the split in the Liberal party gave Labour a national following. In 1918, Labour withdrew completely from the coalition, and in 1922 it became the second largest party in the House of Commons and thus the official opposition.

In 1924 the party formed its first ministry, with MacDonald as prime minister. As Labour was a minority in Parliament and depended on Liberal support, the enactment of legislation proved difficult, and the government's domestic program of unemployment relief and housing differed little from that of its Conservative predecessor. Effective primarily in foreign affairs, the ministry recognized the USSR. The party was turned out of office in Oct., 1924, in an election marked by Conservative exploitation of the Zinoviev letter (see under Zinoviev, Grigori).

In 1929, Labour formed another minority ministry. MacDonald and Philip Snowden reacted to the severe depression with conservative economic policies that involved reducing unemployment relief. When the majority of the cabinet refused to accede, MacDonald formed (1931) a coalition government, but he and the Labour leaders who joined him were expelled from the party. Heavily defeated in the election of 1931, the Labour party moved slightly to the left, advocating nationalization of major industries and more progressive taxation. In the next few years Labour found new leaders in Clement Attlee (later Earl Attlee), Herbert Morrison, and Ernest Bevin.

In the early 1930s the party passed antiwar resolutions and advocated collective security through the League of Nations, but it favored aid to the republican government in the Spanish civil war and eventually came to accept rearmament against the threat from Nazi Germany. After the fall of France to German forces in World War II, Labour agreed to join Winston Churchill's coalition government; Bevin as minister of labor and Attlee as deputy prime minister, together with other Labour ministers, took charge of domestic affairs during the war years.

The Postwar Years

In 1945 the party won an overwhelming electoral victory, and Attlee became prime minister in Labour's first majority government. The new government nationalized the Bank of England, the fuel and power industries (coal, electricity, gas, and atomic energy), transportation, and most of the iron and steel industry. It also enacted a comprehensive social security system, which included a national health service. In the areas of colonial and foreign policy, it granted independence to India and Pakistan, Burma (Myanmar), and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and allied itself with the United States in a strong anti-Communist posture.

Faced with postwar shortages and the problems of reconstruction, Attlee's government encountered severe financial difficulties, despite American assistance. Rationing continued to be a necessity, economic recovery was slow, and the cost of rearmament increased the strains on the economy. The government barely maintained its majority in the general elections of 1950, and the following year it was defeated by the Conservatives.

During the long period of opposition that followed (the Conservatives were returned to power in 1955 and in 1959), the Labour party argued and almost split on questions of disarmament, aid to developing countries, and furtherance of socialism at home. When Attlee and other elder leaders retired and Hugh Gaitskell became party leader, Aneurin Bevan, leading the left wing of the party, unsuccessfully contested Gaitskell's position. Although Bevan was soon reconciled with the party leadership, his supporters continued to urge a policy of diplomatic neutralism and unilateral disarmament, in addition to a strong socialist program. The party's right-wing, on the other hand, argued that prosperity had diminished the appeal of socialism to the average worker and that the party should adopt a broader, more pragmatic program. Gaitskell consolidated his position as leader in the early 1960s, and the party achieved a new solidarity.

The 1960s to the Present

Harold Wilson, who became leader on Gaitskell's death in 1963, was able to lead the party to victory in 1964. He was prime minister until the Conservative party returned to power in 1970. Wilson's administration was marked by a continued decline in Britain's international political and economic position, which gave little opportunity for social innovation.

After 1970, the Labour party, in opposition, again found it difficult to present a united front. The reversal of the party's position on Britain's entry into the European Community (now the European Union), after having earlier supported it, and a renewed call for further nationalization of industry were indications of a greater left-wing militancy within the party. The party returned to power as a result of the elections of Feb., 1974, but as a minority government. Wilson's second administration began renegotiation of the terms of Britain's membership in the European Community and announced plans for large-scale nationalization. Despite continuing economic difficulties he called new elections in Oct., 1974, and Labour won a small majority. James Callaghan took over as prime minister following Wilson's resignation in 1976.

The party lost power to the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher in the 1979 elections and remained in the opposition until the late 1990s. Michael Foot became party leader in 1980 but was succeeded by Neil Kinnock in 1983. Kinnock led the party to abandon some of its traditional left-wing positions but proved unable to achieve victory at the polls. He resigned in 1992 after the Conservative victory in the general elections and was succeeded by John Smith. After Smith's untimely death in 1994, moderate Tony Blair was chosen to lead the party. Under Blair's leadership, the party formally abandoned traditional socialism in 1995 and subsequently won (1997, 2001) consecutive resounding victories at the polls. The party's narrower victory in 2005 marked the first time Labour had three consecutive national elections. Blair stepped down as party leader and prime minister in 2007, and was succeeded by Gordon Brown.

Institutional Revolutionary party, Span. Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), Mexican political party. Established in 1929 as the National Revolutionary party by former President Plutarco Calles, it brought together the country's governmental, military, and agricultural leaders in a program of socioeconomic reform. In 1938 it was renamed the Mexican Revolutionary party, and in 1946 it acquired its present name. During the rest of the century all Mexican presidents and most officials belonged to the PRI, which was often accused of corruption and electoral fraud, the most clear-cut national example of the latter being the 1988 presidential election. Its victory margins decreased in the 1980s and 90s, and it lost some state elections to its opponents, but the party still remained Mexico's dominant political group.

In 1994 the PRI's presidential candidate, Luis Donaldo Colosio Murrieta, was assassinated; the party's new candidate, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, won the presidency by a narrow margin. In the 1997 National Congress elections the party lost its majority in the lower house, although it remained the largest party. Zedillo worked to modernize and democratize both Mexico and the party, and in 1999 the PRI broke with the tradition of having presidents pick their own successors and held its first presidential primary. Nonetheless, in the 2000 national elections, the PRI candidate, Francisco Labastida Ochoa, lost to Vicente Fox Quesada, of the National Action party (PAN), ending more than 70 years of PRI control of the national government. The 2006 elections saw Roberto Madrazo, the PRI candidate for president, place third, and the party also came in third in terms of the vote for members of Mexico's congress. The PRI nonetheless continues, however, to be the nation's largest party in terms of local and state government officeholders.

Greenback party, in U.S. history, political organization formed in the years 1874-76 to promote currency expansion. The members were principally farmers of the West and the South; stricken by the Panic of 1873, they saw salvation in an inflated currency that would wipe out the farm debts contracted in times of high prices. They were opposed by the conservatives, who managed to get the Resumption Act of 1875 passed. The Greenbackers had in 1874 hoped to capture the Democratic party, but the nomination of Samuel J. Tilden killed that hope, and the Greenback party nominated Peter Cooper as its own candidate for President in 1876. The Greenbackers got only 81,737 votes. In 1878, however, certain labor organizations, embittered by the labor troubles in 1877, united with the advocates of cheap money in the Greenback-Labor party, and the combination party polled over 1 million votes and elected 14 Representatives to Congress that year. The Greenbackers' hopes for 1880 were high, and bidding for wider support they broadened their program by endorsement of woman suffrage, federal regulation of interstate commerce, and a graduated income tax. For the presidency in 1880 the party nominated its most notable figure, Gen. James B. Weaver, but the return of prosperity, the passage of the Bland-Allison Act (1878), and the success of the Resumption Act had allayed the discontent on which the party had grown, and the Greenback-Labor vote declined in 1880 to just a little over 300,000. When the candidate in 1884, Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler (1818-93), did very badly, the party dissolved. Some members joined the Union Labor party in 1888, but more of them went back to the old parties. Later many Greenbackers, among them Weaver and Ignatius Donnelly, became leading figures in the Populist party.

Green party, any of the political parties established in various countries to oppose the destructive environmental effects of many modern technologies and the economic systems and institutions that drive them. Many Green parties also advocate pacifism and strongly support human rights; the parties are typically grassroots leftist in their political orientation.

There are numerous Green parties in Europe, 32 of which are members of the European Federation of Green Parties. In 2003 those parties established the European Green party, in part in order to campaign on a common platform in EU elections. The German Green party, founded in West Germany in 1979, had some political successes in the 1980s and merged with a group from the former East Germany in 1993. In 1994 it outpolled the Free Democrats, previously Germany's third largest party; it again was the third largest party in 1998, when it first entered the government in a sometimes strained coalition with the Social Democrats, and in 2002. In 2005, however, it placed fifth, and was excluded from the coalition government formed by the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. Green parties in several other European nations have been part of coalition governments, perhaps most notably in France (1997-2002).

A U.S. group has existed since 1973; the Green party of the United States was officially formed in 2001 from the Association of State Green Parties. There are 43 state organizations affiliated with the national confederation. Ralph Nader was the Green party's presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000, and in the latter election the party garnered the largest vote (2.6%) of any U.S. third party. In 2004 the party nominated David Cobb.

Free-Soil party, in U.S. history, political party that came into existence in 1847-48 chiefly because of rising opposition to the extension of slavery into any of the territories newly acquired from Mexico. The struggle in Congress over the Wilmot Proviso helped to consolidate the Free-Soil forces, which comprised those New York Democrats known as Barnburners, the antislavery Whigs, and members of the former Liberty party. These forces met in mass convention at Buffalo in Aug., 1848, where the party was formally organized and Martin Van Buren and Charles F. Adams (1807-86) were chosen as its candidates for president and vice president. The platform also declared for a homestead law, internal improvements, and a tariff for revenue only. The party polled nearly 300,000 votes and, by giving New York state to the Whigs, was a decisive factor in making Zachary Taylor president. The party elected one senator, Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, and 13 congressmen. The Compromise of 1850 supposedly settled the slavery issue, and the Barnburner element went back to its old allegiance. A few radical antislavery men kept the organization in existence and nominated John P. Hale for president in 1852; he received more than 150,000 votes. In 1854 the party was absorbed into the new Republican party.

Federalist party, in U.S. history, the political faction that favored a strong federal government.

Origins and Members

In the later years of the Articles of Confederation there was much agitation for a stronger federal union, which was crowned with success when the Constitutional Convention drew up the Constitution of the United States. The men who favored the strong union and who fought for the adoption of the Constitution by the various states were called Federalists, a term made famous in that meaning by the Federalist Papers (see Federalist, The) of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.

After the Constitution was adopted and the new government was established under the presidency of George Washington, political division appeared within the cabinet, the opposing groups being headed by Alexander Hamilton and by Thomas Jefferson. The party that emerged to champion Hamilton's views was the Federalist party. Its opponents, at first called Anti-Federalists, drew together into a Jeffersonian party; first called the Republicans and later the Democratic Republicans, they eventually became known as the Democratic party. Party politics had not yet crystallized when John Adams was elected President, but the choice of Adams was, nevertheless, a modest Federalist victory.

The Federalists were conservatives; they favored a strong centralized government, encouragement of industries, attention to the needs of the great merchants and landowners, and establishment of a well-ordered society. In foreign affairs they were pro-British, while the Jeffersonians were pro-French. The members of the Federalist party were mostly wealthy merchants, big property owners in the North, and conservative small farmers and businessmen. Geographically, they were concentrated in New England, with a strong element in the Middle Atlantic states.

Federalist Policies

During Washington's second administration, and under that of John Adams, Federalist domestic policies were given a chance to prove themselves. The young nation's economy was established on a sound basis, while the governmental structure was expanded and an honest and efficient administrative system was developed. In foreign affairs, however, trouble with France led to virtual warfare in 1798. It led also to the Alien and Sedition Acts, passed by the Federalist-controlled Congress ostensibly in response to hostile actions of the French Revolutionary government but actually designed to destroy the Jeffersonians. John Adams, who was a moderate and honest man, followed the course he considered wise, and by rejecting Hamilton's extreme desires, he caused something of a division in the Federalist ranks.

The Triumph of the Jeffersonian Opposition

The Jeffersonians were meanwhile winning popular support not only among Southern landowners but also among the mechanics, workers, and generally the less privileged everywhere. Jefferson showed skill in building his party, and the Jeffersonians were much better at publicity than were the Federalists.

The election of 1800 was a Federalist debacle. The Jeffersonians came to power and stayed there, establishing the so-called Virginia dynasty, with James Madison succeeding Jefferson and James Monroe succeeding Madison. The Federalist party remained powerful locally, but increasingly the leadership passed to the reactionaries rather than to the moderates. It tended to be a New England party.

This trend was accentuated in the troubled period before the War of 1812. Merchants and shipowners were opposed to the Embargo Act of 1807, which caused considerable economic loss to the seaboard cities, and their feelings were expressed through the Federalist party. The Federalists, however, failed to enlist De Witt Clinton and his followers in New York in their cause, and their challenge in the elections of 1808 was easily overridden by the Jeffersonians.

Dissolution of the Party

Opposition to war brought the Federalists the support of Clinton and many others, and the party made a good showing in the election of 1812, winning New England (except for radical Vermont), New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and part of Maryland. They failed, however, in Pennsylvania and lost the election. While the country was at war, the disgruntled merchants of New England, represented by the Essex Junto, contemplated secession and called the Hartford Convention. Thus, paradoxically the Federalists became the champions of states' rights.

The successful issue of the war ruined the party, which became firmly and solely the party of New England conservatives. The so-called era of good feelings followed, and politics became a matter of internal strife within the Democratic party. The Federalist party did not even offer a presidential candidate in 1820, and by the election of 1824 it was virtually dead.

Farmer-Labor party, in U.S. history, political organization composed of agrarian and organized labor interests. Formed in 1919 as the National Labor party, it changed its name at its 1920 presidential nominating convention in order to appeal to farmers. The party's platform called for the public ownership of railroads, utilities, and natural resources; an end to private banking; and the nationalization of unused land. The convention resisted the efforts of former Progressives to nominate Robert La Follette and instead chose as its candidate Parley P. Christensen. The party made a poor showing in the 1920 election; its main strength lay in the states of Washington, Montana, and South Dakota. In 1923, Communists gained control of the party, and in the following year it joined other dissident groups in the Conference for Progressive Political Action, which supported the presidential candidacy of La Follette. After the 1924 election, the party passed out of existence. Meanwhile, representatives of the Nonpartisan League in Minnesota, along with various labor unions, had entered a slate of candidates for state elections in 1918 and 1920 under the name of Farmer-Labor party. Remaining aloof from the national party of the same name, it established a permanent party structure in 1922. It quickly became a powerful political force in Minnesota, electing Henrik Shipstead and Magnus Johnson to the U.S. Senate and Floyd B. Olson to the governorship. It also won many local elections. At first the party agitated for government ownership of industry, but in the 1930s it came to support Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal programs. In 1944 it merged with the Minnesota Democratic party, where it remains a part of the official party name.

Donner Party, group of emigrants to California who in the winter of 1846-47 met with one of the most famous tragedies in Western history. The California-bound families were mostly from Illinois and Iowa, and most prominent among them were the two Donner families and the Reed family. In going West they took a little-used, supposedly shorter route after leaving Fort Bridger; the route proved arduous and and they were delayed. They suffered severely in crossing the salt flats W of Great Salt Lake, and dissensions and ill feelings in the party arose when they reached what is today Donner Lake in the Sierra Nevada. They paused (Oct., 1846) to recover their strength, and early snow caught them, falling deep in the passes and trapping them. Their limited food gave out, the cold continued, and the suffering of the group, some two thirds of them camped on Alder Creek and the remaining 22, including all of the Donner family, camped at Donner Lake, grew intense.

A party of 15 snowshoers that attempted to make its way through the snow-choked passes in December to get help suffered horribly; about half of them survived to get aid from Sutter's Fort. Many of the emigrants died during the winter. Some surviving members of the Donner Party were reputedly driven to cannibalism, but despite archaeological examinations of the remains, cannibalism has never been definitively proved. Finally, expeditions from the Sacramento valley made their way through the snowdrifts to rescue the hunger-maddened migrants. Only about half of the original party of 81 reached California. The survivors later disagreed violently as to the details of (and particularly the blame for) the disaster. Donner Lake, named for the party, is today a popular mountain resort near Truckee. The large bronze Pioneer Monument (1918) erected at the lake is dedicated to the party. Nearby Donner Pass has a U.S. weather observatory.

Democratic party, American political party; the oldest continuous political party in the United States.

Origins in Jeffersonian Democracy

When political alignments first emerged in George Washington's administration, opposing factions were led by Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. In the basic disagreement over the nature and functions of government and of society, the Jeffersonians advocated a society based on the small farmer; they opposed strong centralized government and were suspicious of urban commercial interests. Their ideals—opposed to those of the Federalist party—came to be known as Jeffersonian democracy, based in large part on faith in the virtue and ability of the common man and the limitation of the powers of the federal government. This group of Anti-Federalists, who called themselves Republicans or Democratic Republicans (the name was not fixed as Democratic until 1828), supported many of the ideals of the French Revolution and opposed close relations with Great Britain.

Led by Jefferson and his ally James Madison, the group had become a nationwide party by 1800, winning the support of Aaron Burr and George Clinton in New York, of Benjamin Rush and Albert Gallatin in Pennsylvania, and of most influential politicians in the South. Jefferson became President in 1800 in an election that has often been called a turning point in American history. With this election emerged an alliance between Southern agrarians and Northern city dwellers, an alliance that grew to be the dominating coalition of the party. With Madison and James Monroe succeeding Jefferson, the party's "Virginia dynasty" held the presidency until 1824.

The Dominant Party

As the Federalist party waned, politics came to consist mainly of feuds within the Democratic Republican organization, such as the opposition of the Quids to Madison's election (1808) and the peace ticket led by De Witt Clinton (1812). By 1820 the party dominated the nation so completely that Monroe was reelected without opposition. But the foundations for political regrouping were being laid.

In 1824 the electoral vote was split between Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay; when the election went into the House of Representatives, Clay threw his support to Adams, who won. Jackson was elected in 1828 and in 1832 (when his followers held the first national convention of the Democratic party). In the debates of his administrations, especially over his dissolution of the Bank of the United States and the nullification controversy, opposition ultimately coalesced in the Whig party.

Until 1860 the Democrats won all the presidential elections except those of 1840 and 1848, electing Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan. During this period political debate centered more and more on the bitter question of slavery that was dividing North and South. With the demise of the Whig party in the election of 1852 and the emergence of the sectional, antislavery Republican party in 1854 (succeeding the Free-Soil party), the Democrats remained the sole national party.

The vital question of the decade between 1850 and 1860 concerned slavery in the territories, and on this issue the Democratic party divided sharply. One group, mainly Northern, led by Stephen A. Douglas, championed the doctrine of popular sovereignty, which held that the inhabitants of the territory should decide whether it would be slave or free. Other Northern Democrats (mostly the old Barnburners) swung over to the new antislavery parties. Southern Democrats, led by Robert Toombs and Jefferson Davis among others, and buttressed by the Supreme Court's decision in the Dred Scott Case, held that slavery must be protected in the territories. At the Democratic Convention of 1860 the party split, Northern Democrats nominating Douglas, and the Southern Democrats choosing John C. Breckinridge, thus facilitating the victory of Abraham Lincoln.

From the Civil War to Bryan

During the Civil War some members of the party were openly sympathetic toward the South (see Copperheads), and Republicans in postwar years attempted with some success to depict the Democrats as the party of rebellion. Southern leaders associated the defeat of the South and Reconstruction with the Republican party, and the eleven states of the old Confederacy, with few exceptions, voted Democratic until the 1960s, giving rise to the "solid South."

The years from 1860 to 1912 were lean ones for the party on the national level. In 1876 the Democratic candidate, Samuel J. Tilden, won a plurality of the popular vote, but the disputed electoral votes of Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana (states still under Republican control) were awarded to the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who became President. Thus only the victories of Grover Cleveland (1884 and 1892) broke the Republican control of the presidency during this period. Yet the Democrats often controlled one or both houses of Congress in this era and had wide success in the states.

In general policy the two parties differed little from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 until 1896. Traditionally the Democrats were more the party of agrarianism and cheap money and the opponents of protective tariffs, and even the most conservative Democrats were opposed to the control of industry and trade by the trusts and big business. However, radical economic and agrarian schemes were as distasteful to many Democrats as they were to the Republicans.

The problem of how to deal with the agrarian appeal of the Populist party and with the question of free silver split the Democrats in Cleveland's second administration. In the convention of 1896 a radical group succeeded in nominating William Jennings Bryan for President on a platform calling for free silver and supporting other Populist demands. In the election the party suffered its worst popular defeat since 1872, and it appeared doomed by the impossibility of reconciling its diverse elements—Southern farmers, Western farmers, urban industrial classes, and a wealthy few.

The New Freedom and New Deal

The Democrats regained the presidency in 1912 under Woodrow Wilson, but only because the candidacy of Theodore Roosevelt on the Progressive party ticket diminished the Republican vote. Under Wilson's progressive policy, known as the New Freedom, some fruitful reform was enacted, but the idealism he had inspired waned after World War I. Democratic presidential candidates were defeated in the next three elections, but in 1928 urban Democrats made key inroads into important urban voting blocs.

The economic depression that began in 1929 helped to sweep the Democrats and Franklin Delano Roosevelt into office in 1932, and with his New Deal the Democrats were again identified as the party of reform. Roosevelt was reelected in 1936 with the largest plurality in the nation's history, and in 1940 he became the first U.S. President to be elected to a third term. After leading the country for three years in World War II, he was reelected for a fourth term in 1944.

Upon his death (Apr., 1945) he was succeeded by Harry S. Truman. In 1948, despite the withdrawal from the Democratic convention of many Southern Democrats (whose subsequent nominee was J. Strom Thurmond) and despite the candidacy of Henry A. Wallace, Truman narrowly defeated the Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey. Adlai E. Stevenson, the Democratic nominee in 1952 and 1956 was easily defeated by Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The 1960s to the Present

In 1960, John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon, in the presidential race. Upon Kennedy's assassination (1963), Lyndon B. Johnson became president and won a landslide victory in 1964 against the conservative Republican Barry Goldwater. His administration was marked by much social welfare and civil-rights legislation but the conduct of the Vietnam War split the party, and when combined with the strong third-party showing of the conservative Southern Democrat George C. Wallace, led to the defeat of Hubert H. Humphrey by Richard Nixon in 1968.

The Democratic party of the 1970s and 80s was an uneasy alliance among labor, urban, and ethnic minority groups, intellectuals and middle-class reformers, and increasingly disaffected Southern Democrats. In 1972 the balance in the party was further upset with the nomination of George McGovern, whose defense and social welfare views proved unacceptable to many labor unions and other groups, while the South continued to swing its support to national Republican candidates. Although the Democrats retained their solid majorities in Congress (except for the Senate in 1980, 1982, and 1984), the victorious national coalition built by Nixon was sustained by Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and by George H. W. Bush in 1988. Jimmy Carter, a Democrat from Georgia, may have won in 1976 because of the political scandals that emerged during the second Nixon administration and by temporarily recalling Southern Democratic voters to the fold.

The Democratic victory of Bill Clinton in 1992 was thought by some to have marked the emergence of a new Democratic coalition of labor, women, minorities, moderates, "Reagan Democrats," and the South. In 1994, however, voters expressed their anti-Washington and anti-incumbent sentiments by delivering Republican victories nationwide, with a particularly strong showing in the South, resulting in the loss for the Democrats of their majorities in both houses of Congress as well as the loss of a number of governorships. Clinton's conflicts with the Republican House helped restore much of the stature he had lost in 1994, and with a generally healthy national economy in 1996 he handily defeated Republican Bob Dole and Reform party candidate Ross Perot. Other incumbents, however, also benefited from the voters' general contentment, and Republicans retained control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. This situation was largely unchanged by the 1998 congressional elections despite the Lewinsky scandal, which Democrats feared would benefit Republicans.

In the 2000 elections, the party's presidential nominee, Al Gore, lost to Republican George W. Bush despite having won a plurality of the popular vote. Gore's candidacy was hurt by the campaign of Green party candidate Ralph Nader, and the extremely narrow loss of Florida's electoral votes, which Gore unsuccessfully challenged in the courts. Despite Gore's electoral-college loss, the party's fortunes clearly seemed to have improved since the Reagan years, and the Democrats made gains in Congress, subsequently (June, 2001) controlling the Senate due to a Republican member's defection. The Nov., 2002, elections, however, returned control of both houses of Congress to the Republicans. Senator John Kerry easily won the party's 2004 presidential nomination, but he was soundly defeated in the general election by President Bush. The party also saw the Republicans further solidify their majorities in Congress.

The party's national fortunes reversed with the 2006 congressional elections, in which voter discontent with political scandals, the war in Iraq, and other issues resulted in significant Democratic gains, giving the party control of both houses of Congress. Democrats also made gains in the states, winning control of additional governorships and state legislatures. Some of the gains, however, particularly in the U.S. Senate, were due to narrow victories.

Constitutional Union party, in U.S. history, formed when the conflict between North and South broke down the older parties. The Constitutional Union group, composed of former Whigs and remnants of the Know-Nothings and other groups in the South, was organized just before the election of 1860. Delegates from 20 states attended the party convention at Baltimore in May, 1860, and John Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, were nominated for President and Vice President. The party recognized "no political principle but the Constitution of the country, the union of the states and the enforcement of laws." The party carried Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia in the election.

Conservative party, British political party, formally the Conservative and Unionist party and a continuation of the historic Tory party.

The Rise of the Conservative Party

The name "conservative" was used by George Canning as early as 1824 and was first popularized by John Wilson Croker in the Quarterly Review in 1830. The Reform Bill of 1832 (see Reform Acts), which created some 500,000 middle-class voters, marked the advent of the new party. The 19th-century Conservatives, like their Tory predecessors, were defenders of the established Church of England. They supported aristocratic government and a narrow franchise. They attempted, by passing factory acts and moderating the poor law of 1834, to ease hardships stemming from the Industrial Revolution, but they had no comprehensive plan to cope with its widespread dislocations. They were stronger in rural than in urban areas and were defenders of agricultural interests.

Sir Robert Peel, in his Tamworth Manifesto (1834) and after, attempted to make the party attractive to the new business classes and formed the first Conservative government. But his repeal (1846) of the corn laws brought about an angry reaction from protectionist agricultural interests, led by Lord George Bentinck and Benjamin Disraeli, and resulted in a party split. The "Peelites" eventually merged with the Liberal party, and the Conservatives were hampered by the loss to the Liberals of able young leaders like William Gladstone.

From Disraeli to World War I

In the heyday (1846-73) of free trade and anti-imperial sentiment, the Conservatives were out of office, except for three brief ministries, until the Disraeli government of 1874-80. Disraeli's strong imperialism and his wooing of a broadened electorate with plans for reform, a program known as "Tory democracy," was attractive in a period of depression and increasing imperial competition. After the Reform Bill of 1884 campaign, organizations like the Primrose League and the development of the caucus gave the Conservatives greater solidarity and cohesion. They gained additional strength as a result of the secession (1886) from the Liberal party of the Liberal Unionists, who, like the Conservatives, opposed Home Rule for Ireland. (In 1912 the Liberal Unionists formally merged with the Conservative party.)

The party was in office under the 3d marquess of Salisbury (1885-86; 1886-92; 1895-1902) and Arthur Balfour (1902-5). Efforts by Lord Randolph Churchill to implement further domestic reforms in the tradition of Tory democracy were unsuccessful, but the popular imperialist emphasis remained. In this period the party was gradually drawing closer to middle-class business interests, but the insistence of Joseph Chamberlain on a program of tariff reform, including imperial preference, split the party, which lost (1906) to the Liberals. Conservatives were next in office as part of the coalition government during World War I.

The Dominant Party

In 1922 the Conservatives refused to continue the coalition formed during the war, and under Andrew Bonar Law emerged victorious at the polls. With the Liberals in decline and the Labour party still developing, the Conservatives entered a period of almost continuous hegemony. They held office from 1922 to 1929, interrupted only by a brief Labour ministry in 1924. They were the dominant power in the National governments of Ramsay MacDonald (1931-35), Stanley Baldwin (1935-37), and Neville Chamberlain (1937-40). Under the long leadership of Baldwin (1922-37), the party spoke for the interests of business, the professional and white-collar classes, and farmers. They lost prestige with Chamberlin's appeasement policy toward Nazi Germany, but the country rallied to his successor, Sir Winston Churchill.

Postwar Years

Triumph in war preceded electoral defeat (1945), owing to popular demand for urgently needed social reform, which the Conservatives would not carry through. Returning to office (1951) under Churchill, the Conservatives displayed a sense of pragmatic modernity in accepting many of the social reforms instituted by the Labour government. The party's majority in the House of Commons was increased in 1955, and Sir Anthony Eden became (1955) prime minister upon Churchill's retirement. Popularity diminished temporarily during the Suez Canal crisis, but favorable economic conditions and the political skill of Harold Macmillan, who headed the government after Eden's resignation (1957), resulted in a solid electoral victory in 1959. Under the leadership of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who succeeded Macmillan (1963), the party lost narrowly to the Labour party in 1964. After that defeat, Lord Home instituted a formal balloting system for choosing future party leaders.

Heath, Thatcher, and Major

In 1965, Edward Heath became the first leader chosen through election. Heath led a Conservative government from 1970 to 1974 that faced the problems of a stagnant economy and a declining international political position. In response, the party moved to curb the power of trade unions and encouraged more economic self-reliance. In foreign affairs, it continued the policy of restricting Great Britain's Commonwealth and international roles while expanding ties with Western Europe, as demonstrated by Britain's entry (1973) into the European Community (now the European Union [EU]).

In 1974, the Conservatives lost two elections and Heath was replaced as party leader by Margaret Thatcher, the first woman to lead the party. Thatcher was prime minister from 1979 to 1990, the longest uninterrupted government of the 20th cent. Her government dismantled much of Britain's postwar welfare state, and the party became identified with free-market economic policies. In 1990, Thatcher's leadership was challenged by members of the party; in the ensuing elections, she was succeeded by John Major. Under his leadership, the Conservatives won the 1992 general election. The party received a resounding defeat in the 1997 elections, and Major was replaced as party leader by William Hague. In 2001 the party, which had come to be seen as anti-European Union, was again trounced at the polls by Labour, leading Hague to resign. Iain Duncan Smith was chosen to succeed Hague but served only two years as party leader before he was replaced by Michael Howard. The party made gains in the 2005 elections, but Labour's majority, though reduced, remained secure. Following the elections Howard announced his resignation, and David Cameron was chosed to succeed him.

Conservative party, in Canada. 1 Former Canadian political party that merged with the Progressive party to form the Progressive Conservative party. 2 Officially the Conservative party of Canada, political party formed in 2003 by the merger of the Progressive Conservative party (PC) and the Canadian Alliance (CA). In 1993 the Progressive Conservatives, who had held a parliamentary majority, were savaged at the polls as many voters in W Canada deserted the PC for the young Reform party (the predecessor of the CA). The PC failed to recover from the losses, and in 2003 agreed to unite with the larger CA against the Liberal party, which had secured three successive victories (1993, 1997, 2000) facing a divided conservative opposition. However, a number of prominent PC members, including former party leader Joe Clark, did not support the union. Former CA leader Stephen Harper was elected Conservative party leader. In the 2004 elections the party's social conservatism failed to resonate with enough voters to force the Liberals from power, despite voter unhappiness with the latter. By the 2006 polls, however, the Liberals had been further hurt by scandal, and the Conservatives secured a plurality of the seats in parliament.

Congress party: see Indian National Congress.

Communist party, in China, ruling party of the world's most populous nation since 1949 and most important Communist party in the world since the disintegration of the USSR in 1991.

Origins

Founded in 1921 by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, professors at Beijing Univ., the early party was under strong Comintern influence. The Chinese Communist party became formally allied with the Kuomintang in 1923; by 1925 Communists held many top posts in the Kuomintang organization. Chiang Kai-shek forced a reduction in Communist power in Mar., 1926, but the party maintained the Kuomintang alliance at the insistence of the USSR.

Civil War

In Apr., 1927, Chiang Kai-shek drove the Communists, led by Zhou Enlai, from Shanghai and executed many of their leaders. By July the party went underground, beginning the long conflict between the party and the Kuomintang. In Aug., 1927, Mao Zedong led the peasants of Hunan prov. in the Autumn Crop Uprising, a popular rebellion that was bloodily suppressed.

One branch of the party secretly maintained itself in the cities, even establishing a short-lived Communist commune in Guangzhou (Dec., 1927). In the rural hinterland Mao Zedong and Zhu De established (1927) a precarious soviet in Jiangxi prov. Several other rural soviets were set up in Hunan, Anhui, and Hubei provs. By 1931, Mao was in control of the official soviet government at Ruiqin; radical land-reform was adopted, gaining support of the peasants. A Red Army, under the leadership of Mao and Zhu, was recruited from the peasantry of Jiangxi. Eventually driven from their southern base by Chiang's military campaigns, many thousands of Communists trekked north on the long march and set up headquarters at Yan'an in Shaanxi prov. There the party organization was strengthened, factories were built, and the civil war with Chiang's forces continued.

In Sept., 1937, after a two-year effort to promote Chinese unity in the face of further Japanese aggression (see Sino-Japanese War, Second), the Communists obtained a limited truce from Chiang Kai-shek and accepted his nominal authority, although they retained actual military and political control over large areas in the northwest. The truce with the Kuomintang broke down in 1939, but Communist guerrillas remained the only really effective force against the Japanese in N China. When World War II ended in 1945, the Communists controlled wide rural areas in N and central China and moved quickly to gain control of Manchuria. From 1945 to 1949 party membership swelled as Communist armies took city after city from the Nationalists.

Ruling Party

After the People's Republic of China was set up in 1949, the party became the administrative and policymaking center of the government. It was the party hierarchy that was challenged and nearly destroyed by Mao in the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). The rehabilitation of Deng Xiaoping (1977) represented reestablishment of party control, which was strengthened further by events at Tiananmen Square (1989). It is currently the largest and most important governing Communist party, but it has essentially abandoned the principle of a collective economy directed by the state. It does continue to exercise exclusive political power, however, and it has actively suppressed real and perceived challenges to its power. Jiang Zemin, who was party leader from 1989 to 2002, essentially rejected the notion of class struggle in 2001 when he promoted the recruitment of business executives and entrepreneurs as party members. Jiang was succeeded as party leader by Hu Jintao.

For additional information, see China.

Communist party, in Russia and the Soviet Union, political party that until 1991 exercised all effective power within the Soviet Union, and, as the oldest and for a long time the only ruling Communist party in the world, carried heavy or controlling influence over the Communist parties of other countries (see communism).

Origins

Marxist socialism (see Marxism) took root in Russia in the 1880s. Led by Georgi Plekhanov, a small group of Marxists formed (1883) the League for the Emancipation of Labor, stressing the revolutionary capabilities of the growing industrial proletariat. Other groups were soon founded, the largest of which was the Jewish Bund, and in 1898 they united to form the Russian Social Democratic Labor party. The second party congress (1903) in Brussels and London split into factions of Bolshevism and Menshevism. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, demanded a highly disciplined, centralized, and dedicated revolutionary elite rather than a mass party. These principles guided the Bolsheviks before the 1917 revolution and remained the basis for the party during its years in power.

Seizure of Power

When the Russian Revolution began in Mar., 1917, the Bolsheviks were unprepared, and under the provisional government they played a minor role. When Lenin returned from exile in April, he called for seizure of power, despite opposition within the party. The Bolsheviks gained strength in key areas, capitalizing on mass discontent, and in November they were able to seize control.

With a total party membership of about 200,000, they faced the problem of governing alone or sharing power. Lenin and Leon Trotsky demanded party dictatorship and destroyed all opposition from Mensheviks and other socialist groups. During the civil war (1918-20) the Bolshevik party—from 1918 the All-Russian Communist party—was at the height of its revolutionary ardor. Despite seemingly impossible odds, the party apparatus was strengthened at all levels.

Under Stalin

After the death of Lenin (1924) dissident elements in the party were silenced as Joseph Stalin emerged as Lenin's successor. While party debates in the party congresses of the 1920s were stormy and intraparty democracy was still evident, by the 16th party congress (1929) Stalin established virtual supremacy. The party (from 1925 the All-Union Communist party), was strongly urban. One purpose of the massive agricultural collectivization launched in 1929 was to strengthen the party's rural base. By 1933 there were more than 3,500,000 party members and candidates, many recruited from rural areas.

A series of purges in the 1930s decimated the party. Former leaders—Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, and others—were accused of treason, convicted in spectacular show trials, and executed or exiled. As the purges drew to a close by 1938, party membership had declined to 1,920,000. There was an immediate upturn in membership with the approach of World War II; in the period after the war membership grew more slowly.

The whole Stalinist period (1930-53), was dominated by a repressive and omnipotent dictatorship over all Soviet citizens, including party members. In 1952 the party was renamed the Communist party of the Soviet Union.

Post-Stalin Years

At the 20th party congress (1956, three years after Stalin's death) Premier Nikita Khrushchev testified about Stalin's crimes. The subsequent campaign of de-Stalinization reached a climax at the 22d party congress in 1961, and Stalin's body was removed from its place of honor in a mausoleum in Red Square. After the death of Stalin, Georgi Malenkov at first appeared to hold power, but ultimately Khrushchev emerged as the successor, holding by 1958 the highest posts in both the party and government—first secretary of the party and chairman of the council of ministers. In the 1960s the tendency was once more to broaden the base of membership, but the party as an organization lost influence, while its leaders gained power. Party congresses were infrequent.

Khrushchev, however, was suddenly removed in 1964, replaced by a collective leadership whose leading members were Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin. By the 1970s, Brezhnev, general secretary of the party, was the dominant figure. The party gained a legal monopoly in the Soviet constitution of 1977 (other parties had been banned since 1921), but otherwise the period was one of stagnation after the failure of Khrushchev's reforms.

Dissolution and Revival

After Brezhnev's death (1982) and those of two short-lived successors, Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary (1985) ushering in a period of reform characterized by glasnost, or openness, and perestroika, or restructuring. The reforms increasingly destabilized the governing system, however, eliciting demands for ever more far-reaching reforms.

In 1991 hardline party and military leaders attempted a coup (see August Coup) to halt the process. Until then the CPSU had been organized to parallel the territorial hierarchy of government administration and all significant institutions, including the press and armed forces, thereby effectively controlling all policy. It was for this reason that all political activity in public institutions was banned in 1991, preparatory to dissolving the party, which was incriminated in the coup attempt. The party was banned by Russian President Boris Yeltsin late in 1991, and all its property seized. Subsequently, the Soviet Union itself disintegrated.

By 1992, however, the new Communist Party of Russia had been legally established, and several other descendent parties remain politically important in Russia and some of the other nations that emerged from the former Soviet Union. The Communist Party of Russia, the largest and most well-financed of the new parties, won the largest bloc of seats in the 1995 parliamentary elections, and in the first round of the 1996 Russian presidential election, Communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov received almost as many votes as Yeltsin. Although the party again won the largest percentage of the vote in the 1999 parliamentary elections, the combined vote of the progovernment parties was greater. In what was seen as a pragmatic alliance, the parties supporting with President Putin joined in coalition with the Communists in the Duma, but in Apr., 2002, that alliance collapsed, and most Communist party members were stripped of their leadership positions in the Duma. Meanwhile, in 2000, Putin won the presidency in the first round, while Zyuganov was a distant second.

The parliamentary elections of 2003 were a setback for the party, which polled only 12.6% of the vote, and the party's candidate in the 2004 presidential elections won just 13.7%. Despite the setbacks the party suffered, the 2003 elections left it the only signification opposition party in the State Duma. In Aug., 2004, opponents of Zyuganov within the party attempted unsuccessfuly to oust him, but the following month the dissidents broke with the party and formed the All-Russia Communist party of the Future. Nonetheless, the mainstream Communists remain the second largest national political party in Russia, in both parliamentary (2007) and presidential (2008) balloting.

Communist party, in the United States, political party that espoused the Marxist-Leninist principles of communism.

Origins

The first Communist parties in the United States were founded in 1919 by dissident factions of the Socialist party. The larger, which called itself the Communist party of America, consisted of many of the former foreign language federations of the Socialist party, in particular the Russian Federation, and the former Michigan Socialist party. The other, named the Communist Labor party, was led by Benjamin Gitlow and John Reed. The parties immediately became subject to raids by agents of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and local authorities. These raids resulted in a sharp drop in party membership and, in Jan., 1920, forced the Communists to go underground.

Early Years

In May, 1921, under strong pressure from the Third (Communist) International, or Comintern, the Communist groups in the United States were united as the Communist Party of America. The Comintern also forced a change away from revolutionary militancy to working through established labor organizations and developing a mass following. Accordingly, in Dec., 1921, the Communists organized the Workers party of America, as a legal, acknowledged organization, and by 1923 the underground party had ceased to function. Attempts were made to work through the growing farmer-labor movement of the early 1920s, but they failed, opposed by most farmer-labor leaders and Progressive leader, Senator Robert La Follette. Unsuccessful Communist-led strikes among textile workers in Passaic, N.J. (1926), in New Bedford, Mass. (1928), and among New York City garment workers (1926) also lessened Communist influence in trade unions.

During this period two factions developed within the party. One, led by Jay Lovestone, was generally socialist in background and concerned with political theory. The other, led by William Z. Foster and Earl Browder, was more syndicalist in background and interested in union activity. These two groups alternated in party leadership until 1929, when the Comintern ordered that Foster's group gain control to carry out the Comintern policy line established at its Sixth World Congress (1928). The party was renamed the Communist party of the United States of America.

This era, called the Third Period, saw the development of the theory of "social fascism," by which labor and socialist leaders were denounced as more dangerous enemies of the workers than the fascists. American Communists also made a major appeal for African-American support, calling for the creation of a black republic in the South, on the grounds that African Americans were a national, not a racial, minority. The adoption of the new party line coincided with the beginning of the depression of 1929, and as the economic crisis grew, Communist membership increased. However, its policies isolated the Communists both in politics and in the unions, so that despite increased membership and some success in organizing the unemployed, the party's influence remained small.

Popular Front and World War II

In 1935 the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern announced another change of direction. It now stressed the need for a "popular front," a movement to create political coalitions of all antifascist groups. In the United States, the Communists abandoned opposition to the New Deal; they reentered the mainstream of the trade union movement and played an important part in organizing new unions for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), for the first time gaining important positions of power in the union movement. As antifascist activists they attracted the support of many non-Communists during this period.

The party's attacks on Nazi Germany ended abruptly with the signing of the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact in Aug., 1939, and World War II, which immediately followed, was denounced as an "imperialist" war caused by Great Britain and France. American defense preparations and aid to the Western democracies were vigorously opposed as "war-mongering," and Communist-dominated unions were quick to go out on strike. However, when Germany attacked Russia in June, 1941, the Communist position on the war changed overnight from "imperialist" to "democratic." The party, under the leadership of Earl Browder, now went all out in its support of the war. Strikes were opposed as a hindrance to the war effort, and in 1944 the U.S. Communist party "disbanded" as a political party to become the Communist Political Association.

The Cold War

In 1945, Browder's policy was attacked as being one of the "right deviationism," and he was replaced by William Foster. This change in line and the beginning of the cold war brought the party, which had achieved relative respectability during the war, under renewed attack. In 1948 the Communists supported the presidential candidacy of Henry A. Wallace on the Progressive party ticket, but he obtained only slightly more than a million votes.

Communist influence in labor unions came under increasing attack. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 denied the facilities of the National Labor Relations Board to unions that failed to file affidavits avowing that their officers were not Communists, and in 1949-50 the CIO expelled unions that were still Communist-dominated. In Mar., 1947, President Truman barred Communists or Communist sympathizers from employment in the executive branch of the federal government. The sensational confessions of former Communists, such as Whittaker Chambers, and increasing evidence of Communist espionage led to highly publicized investigations by Congress (especially by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Subcommittee on Government Operations), the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and federal grand juries.

In Oct., 1949, 11 top Communist leaders were convicted on charges of conspiring to advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government. In June, 1951, the Supreme Court found the Smith Act of 1940, under which the convictions had been obtained, constitutional, and the government proceeded to bring many lesser Communist officials to trial. In 1950 the McCarran Internal Security Act required that all Communist and Communist-dominated organizations register with the federal government the names of all members and contributors, and the Communist Control Act of 1954 further strengthened the provisions of the McCarran Act by providing severe penalties for Communists who failed to register, denying collective bargaining power to Communist-dominated unions, and taking away the "rights, privileges and immunities" of the Communist party as a legal organization. At the same time many states passed "little Smith Acts," with such provisions as the requirement of loyalty oaths from state employees and the denial of a place on the ballot to Communist parties. This was also the period of Senator Joseph McCarthy's hysterical search for Communists in all branches of government.

In 1956, Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin's excesses, along with the Russian suppression of the Hungarian revolt in that same year, created new schisms in the U.S. Communist party, which lost thousands of members. The Supreme Court has upheld many of the provisions of the Smith and McCarran acts as they apply to the leadership of the Communist party, but several decisions of the 1960s substantially voided sanctions against the rank and file except where some active conspiracy against U.S. security is proved. As a result the party resumed open activities in 1966 and ran candidates in presidential elections, but the contemporary party is a very minor political force. In the late 1980s, party leader Gus Hall criticized the Gorbachev reforms in the USSR, but as Communism collapsed in the USSR, it was claimed that Hall had received $2 million from the Soviet party. Subsequent declassification (1995-96) of intercepted Soviet cables confirmed that party members had indeed spied for the Soviet Union before and during the cold war, although some scholars questioned the extent to which the cables could trusted.

Chinese Nationalist party: see Kuomintang.

Chinese Communist party: see Communist party, in China.

Bull Moose party: see Progressive party.

Boston Tea Party, 1773. In the contest between British Parliament and the American colonists before the Revolution, Parliament, when repealing the Townshend Acts, had retained the tea tax, partly as a symbol of its right to tax the colonies, partly to aid the financially embarrassed East India Company. The colonists tried to prevent the consignees from accepting taxed tea and were successful in New York and Philadelphia. At Charleston the tea was landed but was held in government warehouses. At Boston, three tea ships arrived and remained unloaded but Gov. Thomas Hutchinson refused to let the ships leave without first paying the duties. A group of indignant colonists, led by Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and others, disguised themselves as Native Americans, boarded the ships on the night of Dec. 16, 1773, and threw the tea into the harbor. In reply Parliament passed the Boston Port Bill (see Intolerable Acts).

Bharatiya Janata party [Hindi,=Indian People's party] (BJP), Indian political party that espouses Hindu nationalism. The BJP draws its Hindu nationalist creed from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS; National Self-Service Organization), a group founded in 1925 in opposition to Mohandas Gandhi and dedicated to the propagation of orthodox Hindu religious practices.

The BJP's direct political antecedent is the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, a party established in 1951 that stood in staunch opposition to what it perceived as the evils of Western cultural imperialism. Its principles were retained when the party was renamed the BJP in 1980. Opposed to the secular democracy advocated by the long-ruling Congress party (see Indian National Congress), the BJP objected to the separate code of civil laws for India's Muslims, supported India's nuclear defense capability, and favored restrictions on foreign investment.

At first largely a northern party popular in Hindi-speaking areas among urban middle-class traders, by 1989 the BJP had won 85 seats in parliament. In the 1990s the party became part of the mainstream political life of India. It scored a major success in the 1996 general elections, winning the most parliamentary seats (161 of 545) but falling short of a majority. Shortly thereafter, the BJP formed a government, with its leader, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, as prime minister, but it fell prior to a confidence vote. The BJP again garnered the largest number of parliamentary seats in the 1998 and 1999 elections and successfully formed governments, again with Vajpayee as prime minister. In power, the BJP tended to avoid many of the Hindu nationalist issues originally central to it, and promoted economic reforms and development, including foreign investment. Although the BJP moved to distance itself somewhat from the RSS and attract Muslim voters, party members were accused of complicity in the violence that killed perhaps as many as 2,000 in Gujarat in Feb.-Mar., 2002. The BJP lost the 2004 elections to the Congress party coalition.

Ba'ath party, Arab political party, in Syria and in Iraq. Its main ideological objectives are secularism, socialism, and pan-Arab unionism. Founded in Damascus in 1941 and reformed, with the name Ba'ath, in the early 1950s, it rapidly achieved political power in Syria.

In 1958—with one of its founders, Salah al-Din Bitar, as foreign minister—it led Syria into the ill-fated United Arab Republic (UAR) with Egypt. The Ba'athists, like most other Syrians, quickly came to resent Egyptian domination, and the Ba'athist members of the union government resigned in Dec., 1959. Syria withdrew from the UAR in 1961.

In 1963 a military coup restored the Ba'ath to power in Syria, and it embarked on a course of large-scale nationalization. From 1963 the Ba'ath was the only legal Syrian political party, but factionalism and intraparty splintering led to a succession of governments and new constitutions. In 1966 a military junta representing the more radical elements in the party displaced the more moderate wing in power, purging from the party its original founders, Michel Aflaq and Bitar.

Subsequently the main line of division was drawn between the so-called progressive faction, led by Nureddin Atassi, which gave priority to the firm establishment of a one-party state and to neo-Marxist economic reform, and the so-called nationalist group, led by Gen. Hafez al-Assad. Assad's following was less doctrinaire about socialism, favoring a militant posture on the Arab union and hostility toward Israel. Despite constant maneuvering and government changes, the two factions remained in an uneasy coalition of power until 1970, when, in another coup, Assad succeeded in ousting Atassi as prime minister. Assad, one of the longest-ruling leaders of the contemporary Middle East, and the Ba'athist party remained at Syria's political helm until 2000, when he was succeeded by Bashar al-Assad, his son.

In Iraq the Ba'athists first came to power in the coup of Feb., 1963, when Abd al-Salem Arif became president. Interference from the Syrian Ba'athists and disputes between the moderates and extremists, culminating in an attempted coup by the latter in Nov., 1963, served to discredit the extremists. However, the moderates continued to play a major role in the succeeding governments. In July, 1968, a bloodless coup brought to power the Ba'athist general Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr. Wranglings within the party continued, and the government periodically purged its dissident members.

Since their inceptions the Ba'athist regimes of Syria and Iraq have often been diametrically opposed. Under Hafez al-Assad in Syria and Saddam Hussein (who succeeded al-Bakr and remained the titular leader of the party until his execution in 2006) in Iraq, both nations moved away from Ba'athist principles, although the ruling parties retained the Ba'ath name.

Anti-Masonic party, American political organization that rose after the disappearance in W New York state in 1826 of William Morgan. A former Mason, Morgan had written a book purporting to reveal Masonic secrets. The Masons were said, without proof, to have murdered him, and in reaction local organizations arose to refuse support to Masons for public office. In New York state Thurlow Weed and William H. Seward attempted unsuccessfully to use the movement, which appealed strongly to the poorer classes, to overthrow Martin Van Buren and the Albany Regency. Anti-Masonry spread from New York to neighboring states and influenced many local and state elections. At Baltimore, in 1831, the Anti-Masons held the first national nominating convention of any party and issued the first written party platform—innovations followed by the older parties. The vote for their presidential candidate, William Wirt, mostly hurt Henry Clay. Usually the Anti-Masons in national politics acted with the National Republican party in opposition to Jacksonian democracy, and in 1834 they helped to form the Whig party.

American party: see Know-Nothing movement.

American Labor party, organized in New York by labor leaders and liberals in 1936, primarily to support Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal and the men favoring it in national and local elections. It gathered strength in New York state and particularly in New York City and had considerable weight there in tipping the scales toward chosen Democratic or Republican candidates. After 1939 it was much torn by strife between left-wing and right-wing factions, chiefly concerning policy toward the USSR. In 1944 an anti-Communist group led by David Dubinsky, defeated in the primaries, dropped out and formed the Liberal party. In 1948 the party polled over 500,000 votes for Henry A. Wallace for President, but many members withdrew in opposition to his candidacy. Failing to poll 50,000 votes in the 1954 New York state election, it lost its place on the New York ballot. In 1956 the party was voted out of existence by its New York state committee.

Group of persons organized to acquire and exercise political power. Formal political parties originated in their modern form in Europe and the U.S. in the 19th century. Whereas mass-based parties appeal for support to the whole electorate, cadre parties aim at attracting only an active elite; most parties have features of both types. All parties develop a political program that defines their ideology and sets out the agenda they would pursue should they win elective office or gain power through extraparliamentary means. Most countries have single-party, two-party, or multiparty systems (see party system). In the U.S., party candidates are usually selected through primary elections at the state level.

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German political party of National Socialism. Founded in 1919 as the German Workers' Party, it changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party when Adolf Hitler became leader (1920–21). The nickname Nazi was taken from the first word of its full name, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei. The party grew from its home base in Bavaria and attracted members from disaffected elements throughout Germany. It organized strong-arm groups (later the SA) to protect its rallies. Though the failed Beer Hall Putsch diminished the party's influence, the effects of the Great Depression brought millions of new members, and in 1932 the party became the largest bloc in the Reichstag. After Hitler was named chancellor in 1933, he obtained passage of the Enabling Act, and his government declared the Nazi party to be the only political party in Germany and required bureaucrats to become members. The party controlled virtually all activities in Germany until Germany's defeat in World War II (1945), after which the party was banned.

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or Kuomintang or Guomindang

Political party that governed all or part of mainland China from 1928 to 1949 and subsequently ruled Taiwan. Founded by Song Jiaoren (1882–1913) and led by Sun Yat-sen, it evolved from a revolutionary league working to overthrow the Qing dynasty into a political party. In the early 1920s the party received guidance from the Soviet Bolshevik party; until 1927 it collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party. Sun's program, which stressed nationalism, democracy, and people's livelihood, was ineffectively implemented by his successor, Chiang Kai-shek, who became increasingly conservative and dictatorial. During World War II, Chiang focused on suppressing the Chinese communists at the expense of defending the country from the Japanese; in 1949 the Nationalists were driven from the mainland to Taiwan. There they maintained a monopoly on political power until 1989, when the first legal opposition party won seats in the legislature. The first non-Nationalist president was elected in 2000. Seealso Wang Jingwei.

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British political party that emerged in the mid-19th century as the successor to the Whigs. It was the major party in opposition to the Conservative Party until 1918, after which it was supplanted by the Labour Party. It was initially supported by the middle class that was enfranchised by the Reform Bill of 1832. Earl Russell's administration in 1846 is sometimes regarded as the first Liberal government, but the first unequivocally Liberal government was formed in 1868 by William E. Gladstone. Under Gladstone, until 1894, the party's hallmark was reform; after 1884 it espoused Irish Home Rule. It championed individualism, private enterprise, human rights, and promotion of social justice; wary of imperial expansion, it was pacific and internationalist. During World War I it split into two camps, centred on H.H. Asquith and David Lloyd George. It continued as a minor party until 1988, when it merged with the Social Democratic Party to form the Liberal Democratic Party.

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Political party that dominated Mexico's political life for most of the time since its founding in 1929. It was established as a result of a shift of power from political-military chieftains to state party units following the Mexican Revolution (1910–20). Until the late 1990s, nomination to public office by the PRI virtually guaranteed election, but in 1997 Mexico City elected its first non-PRI mayor. At the national level, the president, as leader of the party, typically selected the party's next presidential candidate—thus effectively choosing his own successor. Pres. Ernesto Zedillo broke from that tradition in 1999, and the following year opposition candidate Vicente Fox won the presidency, although the PRI maintained control of several state governments.

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Incident on Dec. 16, 1773, in which American patriots dressed as Indians threw 342 chests of tea from three British ships into Boston Harbour. Their leader was Samuel Adams. The action was taken to prevent the payment of a British-imposed tax on tea and to protest the British monopoly of the colonial tea trade authorized by the Tea Act. In retaliation, Parliament passed the punitive Intolerable Acts, which further united the colonies in their opposition to the British.

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Sikh political party in India. The term Akali was first applied to suicide squads that appeared in the Sikh armies circa 1690 in response to Mughal persecution. The Akali name was revived in the 1920s during the gurdwara reform movement to refer to a semimilitary corps of volunteers opposed to British rule. Akalis took the lead in agitation for a Punjabi-speaking Sikh-majority state, a goal achieved in 1966 with the establishment of the Indian state of Punjab. The modern Akali Party participates in national elections but is mainly concerned with the status of the Sikhs in Punjab.

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