Nordic agrarian parties

The Nordic agrarian parties, also referred to as Scandinavian agrarian parties or agrarian liberal parties, are agrarian political parties that belong to a political tradition particular to the Nordic countries. Positioning themselves in the centre of the political spectrum, but fulfilling roles distinctive to Nordic countries, they remain hard to classify by conventional political ideology. These parties are non-Socialist and typically combine a commitment to small businesses, rural issues and political decentralisation, and, at times, scepticism towards the European Union. The parties have divergent views on the free market and environmentalism. Internationally, they are most commonly aligned to the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) and the Liberal International. Historically farmers' parties, a declining farmer population after the Second World War made them broaden their scope to other issues and sections of society. At this time three of them renamed themselves to Centre Party, with the Finnish Centre Party being the last to do so, in 1965. In modern period, the main agrarian parties are the Centre Party in Sweden, Venstre in Denmark, Centre Party in Finland, Centre Party in Norway and Progressive Party in Iceland. Compared to continental Europe, the peasants in the Nordic countries historically had an unparalleled degree of political influence. They were not only independent, but also represented as the fourth estate in the national diets, like in the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates. The agrarian movement thus precedes the labour movement by centuries in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway. The first of the parties, Venstre in Denmark, was formed as a liberal, anti-tax farmers' party in 1870, uniting various groups of bondevenner (friends of the farmers) which had existed since the introduction of democracy in 1849. The rest of the parties emerged in the early 20th century, spurred by the introduction of universal suffrage and proportional representation across the region.