Major Party

The Democratic Party traces its roots to the Democratic-Republican faction of Thomas Jefferson and took its modern name under Andr...

The Republican Party emerged in 1854 from Northern opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the spread of slavery, nominating Abr...

Labour emerged from the Labour Representation Committee of 1900, a union and socialist alliance formed after Liberal failures to r...

The Conservatives descend from the Tory party of the late seventeenth century, defenders of crown and church who learned to surviv...

The Liberal Democrats united the old Liberal Party, heir of Gladstone and Lloyd George, with the SDP, the 1981 Labour defectors, a...

The SNP formed in 1934 from a merger of nationalist bodies and spent decades on the fringe, its breakthrough coming with Winnie Ew...

The CDU was founded in 1945 to unite Protestants and Catholics in a democratic Christian democratic party, drawing lessons from We...

The CSU has governed Bavaria almost continuously since 1945 alone or in coalition, making it the most electorally successful party...

The SPD traces its founding to the 1863 ADAV of Ferdinand Lassalle and the 1869 party of Bebel and Liebknecht, united at Gotha in ...

Die Grunen entered the Bundestag in 1983 with a strident ecological and pacifist program, the first new party to do so in decades....

The AfD began in 2013 as a Eurosceptic professors party opposing euro bailouts, riding the euro crisis to near the five percent th...

Die Linke formed in 2007 from the PDS, successor of the East German SED, merged with the WASG, a West German union left around Osk...

The FDP unites national liberals and left liberals in the free market, civil libertarian tradition, formed in 1948 in the western ...

Emmanuel Macron founded La Republique En Marche weeks before resigning as economy minister, and in 2017 his year old movement won ...

Founded in 1972 as the Front National, the party spent two decades on the fringes under Jean-Marie Le Pen before his 2002 presiden...

The UMP was created in 2002 to unite the Gaullist RPR and its allies behind Jacques Chirac, winning the presidency and dominating ...

The PS succeeded the SFIO, the century old socialist federation, in 1969, and Francois Mitterrand rebuilt it at Epinay in 1971 int...

Fratelli d Italia split from Berlusconi People of Freedom in 2012, carrying the heritage of the postwar Italian Social Movement, i...

The Partito Democratico formed in 2007 from the Democrats of the Left, heirs of the Italian Communist Party via the PDS, and La Ma...

The Lega Nord united the regional leagues of the North in 1991, campaigning for federalism and northern independence rhetoric unde...

The PSOE was founded in 1879 by Pablo Iglesias, mine unionists and Marxists, surviving illegality under Primo de Rivera and Franco...

The PP refounded the Alianza Popular in 1989 as a broad center right party and under Jose Maria Aznar won 1996, delivering economi...

PiS formed in 2001 around Lech and Jarosaw Kaczynski after the collapse of the Solidarity Electoral Action, fusing social conserva...

Civic Platform formed in 2001 around Donald Tusk and Andrzej Olechowski as a pro market, pro European liberal conservative party, ...

Fidesz began in 1988 as the Alliance of Young Democrats, anticommunist liberals against the aging regime, and Orban demanded Sovie...

New Democracy was founded by Karamanlis in 1974 to lead the restored democracy after the colonels collapse, uniting conservatives ...

SAP was founded in 1889 and built the folkhemmet, the people home, through decades of near unbroken governance: universal welfare,...

The Moderates began as the conservative electoral league of 1904, becoming the Moderate Party in 1969 and shifting to market liber...

The Sweden Democrats grew from the 1980s Keep Sweden Swedish movement, spending two decades on the fringe before the 2010 entry in...

Fine Gael descends from Cumann na nGaedheal, the pro Treaty party that governed the new Free State under W T Cosgrave, merged in 1...

Fianna Fail, Soldiers of Destiny, split from Sinn Fein in 1926 over the oath of allegiance, and under Eamon de Valera governed fro...

Sinn Fein, Ourselves Alone, was founded by Arthur Griffith in 1905 and swept the 1918 election, its MPs forming the First Dail and...

The VVD formed in 1948 from liberal traditions, fiscally conservative and socially progressive, the party of business and the prof...

The PvdA emerged in 1946 from prewar social democracy and progressive religious currents, the party of Willem Drees welfare state ...

The FPO was founded in 1955 by ex Nazis of the VdU, a pan German liberal nationalist current. Under Jorg Haider from 1986 it radic...

MORENA, the National Regeneration Movement, was registered by Lopez Obrador after his 2012 defeat, converting his personal movemen...

PAN was founded in 1939 by Catholic business and professional circles opposed to revolutionary anticlericalism, contesting electio...

Justicialismo grew from the 1945 labor mobilization and Peron presidency, formalized as a party in 1947 and banned after his 1955 ...

The PT emerged from the Sao Paulo metalworker strikes of the late 1970s, founded in 1980 by Lula, unionists, intellectuals, and li...

The ANR Colorado Party was founded in 1887 by supporters of General Bernardino Caballero against liberal rivals, dominating Paragu...

The Blancos descend from the 1836 risings of Manuel Oribe against Colorado president Rivera, defining nineteenth century civil war...

The BJP formed in 1980 from the Janata Party breakup, building on the RSS movement founded 1925 whose cadres staffed it. From two ...

Congress was founded in 1885 by colonial era Indian professionals under A O Hume, becoming under Gandhi and Nehru the mass movemen...

Founded in 1921 in Shanghai, the CCP survived near destruction, built the Red Army, and under Mao Zedong won the civil war in 1949...

The LDP formed in 1955 from the merger of conservative rivals, establishing the 1955 System: permanent conservative rule facing a ...

The KMT, formed by Sun Yat-sen from the revolutionary alliance after the 1911 revolution, was reorganized on Leninist lines in 192...

The DPP formed illegally in 1986 as the umbrella of the tangwai democracy movement, legalized with the end of martial law in 1987....

The ANC was founded in 1912 as the South African Native National Congress, petitioning against land dispossession, evolving under ...

The DA grew from the Democratic Party of Helen Suzman anti apartheid tradition, merging with the New National Party rump in 2000 b...

FRELIMO united exile nationalist movements in 1962 under Eduardo Mondlane, fighting the Portuguese to the 1974 coup in Lisbon that...

SWAPO, the South West Africa People Organization, organized contract worker and exile politics from 1960 under Sam Nujoma, launchi...

ZANU of Mugabe and ZAPU of Nkomo fought the Rhodesian regime from the 1960s, ZANU with Chinese backing from Mozambique. The 1979 L...

Likud was formed in 1973 as a union of the Herut of Menachem Begin, liberals, and state list Revisionist successors. Begin 1977 vi...

Labor formed in the colonies during the 1891 strikes, holding the world first labor governments briefly in Queensland in 1899, and...

Menzies founded the Liberals in 1944-45 from the wreckage of the United Australia Party, a coalition of liberals and conservatives...

The Country Party formed in 1920 from farmer and grazier organizations, winning the 1923 Bruce coalition that institutionalized th...

The Australian Greens united state green formations in 1992, with roots in the 1982 Franklin Dam blockade and Bob Brown Tasmanian ...

The Liberals formed around Confederation 1867 with the reform tradition of Baldwin and Lafontaine, governing under Laurier, the lo...

The Conservative Party was created in 2003 by the merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Canadian Alliance, itself heir o...

The NDP succeeded the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, the 1932 prairie socialist movement of Tommy Douglas, medicare father,...