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What is a political party?
Political parties are a part of modern history. Political parties came into being at the end of the 18th and in the 19th century. At the same time one can see the development of electoral and parliamentary systems. Duverger (Encyclopedia Brittanica) defines parties as 'organized groups seeking political power, whether by democratic elections or by revolution'.

All parties want to participate to some extent in the exercise of political power. This can be by forming a government or by being in the opposition. Nowadays one can distinguish three kinds of parties:
- democratic parties
- authoritarian parties
- revolutionary parties
Democratic parties are those parties that a) seek political power by democratic elections and b) are ready to give up power after losing democratic elections. Authoritarian parties are those parties that have or seek power and want to remain in power without respecting the democratic process. Revolutionary parties are those parties that seek political power by revolution. After realizing its goal this party evolves either into a democratic party either into a authoritarian party. The distinction is not always easy to make, because a party may make use of both procedures. Don't forget that the German National-Socialist got the power through a democratic process. A democratic party can choose a violent way of seeking power if its opponents are not democratic.

According to this attempt of a definition organizations that do not wish to take part in democratic elections and do not seek power in another way cannot be considered as parties. An exception can be made for organizations boycotting elections as far as they consider these elections not free and fair.

Political orientation
Originally parties belonged to two currents, the liberal and the conservative current. This bipolarization changed in the second half of the 19th century. Both in Europe and in Latin-America in many countries new parties were formed. One can see a split in the liberal current between moderates and radicals. More to the left social-democratic (socialist) parties were formed. Christian parties were also formed, being the ancestors of the 20th century christian-democratic parties. Nowadays there is a broad spectrum of political orientation. This makes it always difficult to to give the right political label to a party. Many party use labels which cannot be used in an international or comparative context. For example the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party might be liberal in the Japanese sense of the word, it isn't liberal in the international sence of the word. Next to that there are parties which don't want to use labels. For instance: the Dutch party Democrats 66, which can be labeled as a social liberal party, doesn't use any label in the national political context.
In Elections around the world and Worldwide diretory of parties parties are labelled conform the following categorization. The labels used are based on a European context (simply because the editor is an European) and are a result of a personal impression based on news and literature. Parties can be listed in more than one category.

The following categories of parties are distinguished:
    Agrarian parties
    - Agrarian parties are defined here as parties promoting the interests of farmers and peasants.

    Authoritarian parties
    - Authoritarian parties are defined here as parties striving after or ruling with an authoritarian or dictatorial way of governing and parties based on former dictatorships. Communist parties are supposed to be authoritarian and listed under extreme left-wing parties. Fascist parties are also supposed to be authoritarian and are listed under extreme right-wing parties.

    Christian-democratic and democratic conservative parties
    - Christian-democratic parties are defined here as parties which are based on a christian foundation without being christian-fundamentalist. Democratic conservative parties are defined here as parties adhering to traditional values in combination with free-market ideology and law-and-order positions, without being christian-democratic.

    Communist and other extreme left-wing parties
    - Communist is reserved for parties officially adhering a communist ideology. Post-communist parties are labeled as socialist or even as social-democratic. Extreme left-wing is used for other non-democratic socialist parties.

    Dictatorial parties
    - Dictatorial is used only for parties whcih rule a country in a dictatorial way. As far as possible each of these parties is also categorized in an ideological category.

    Extreme right-wing parties
    - Extreme right-wing is a collection label for nationalist, xenophobic and fascist(oide) parties. Nationalist parties are defined here as parties strongly emphasizing national values. National emancipation parties are not listed in this category. Xenophobic parties are defined here as parties which are hostile to national minorities. Fascist is only used for parties officialy adhering fascist (mussolini'ist) ideas.

    Green parties
    - Green parties are defined here as all kinds of ecological parties.

    Liberal and centrist parties
    - Liberal parties are defined here as those parties adhering liberal values: freedom, democracy and social justice. Main sub-labels are social-liberal for the more progressive liberal parties and conservative liberal for the more traditional or classical liberal parties. The libertarian parties are not included. Centrist parties are defined here as parties which are in the centre of the political spectrum without officially adhering liberal values. Included are also agrarian parties, using agrarian-centrist as label.

    Libertarian parties
    - Libertarian parties are defined here as strict classical liberal parties.

    Minority and ethnic parties
    - Minority and ethnic parties are defined here as parties representing national minorities or groups in a country.

    One issue parties
    - One-issue parties are defined here as parties only focussing at one issue. Examples are feminist, pensioners and anti-EC-parties.

    Pseudo-parties
    - Pseudo-parties parties are defined here as parties legally existing in dictatorships and subject to the leadership of the dictatorial party.

    Regionalist parties
    - Regionalist parties are defined here as regional parties.

    Religious parties
    - Religious is used as a collection for various religious parties.

    Seperatist and independentist parties
    - Separatist parties are defined here as parties which strive after independence for a part of the country. Independentist parties are defined here as parties in dependencies which strive after independence.

    Social-democratic and socialist parties
    - Social-democratic parties are defined here as more moderate socialist parties. Socialist parties are defined here as radical socialist parties. Progressive parties are defined here as left-wing parties which are not based on a social-democratic, socialist of ecological position.

    Violent parties
    - Violent parties are defined here as parties (linked to organizations) using violence to enact their goals in a specific society.

Other labels that are used are
- a. democratic: parties in opposition to authoritarian or dictatorial parties.
- b. personalist: parties which function as a political vehicle of one personality.
- c. populist: parties adopting a broad program of themes and governments measures popular among the great masses of the population without regard to ideological consistency.
- d. reformist: parties which want to reform an authoritarian society into a democratic society.