Radicalism (historical) - Radicalism and Liberalism

Radicalism and Liberalism

See also Liberalism

In some countries the radical tendency is a variant of liberalism. Sometimes it is less doctrinaire and more moderate; other times it is more extreme. In Victorian era Britain the Radicals were part of the Liberal coalition, but often rebelled when the more traditional Whigs in that coalition resisted democratic reforms. In other countries, these left wing liberals have formed their own radical parties with various names, e.g. in Switzerland and Germany (the Freisinn), Bulgaria, Denmark, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands but also Argentina, Chile and Paraguay. This does not mean that all radical parties were formed by left wing liberals. In the French political literature it is normal to make a clear separation between liberalism and radicalism in France. In Serbia both radicalism and liberalism have had their distinctiveness during the 19th century, with the Radical Party being the dominant political party throughout the entire multi-parliamentary period before the unification of Yugoslavia. It had cracked in 1903 when the Independent Radical Party had left, leaving the old People's Radical Party straying far from liberalism and into right-wing nationalism and conservatism. The Independents had created the Democratic Party, whereas the Radicals of today are a far-right political group.

But even the French radicals were aligned to the international liberal movement in the first half of the twentieth century (founded on August 29, 1924 and dissolved in 1934), in the Entente Internationale des Partis Radicaux et des Partis Démocratiques similaires.