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Concept
National liberalism
Summary
National liberalism is a variant of liberalism, combining liberal policies and issues with elements of nationalism. Historically, national liberalism has also been used in the same meaning as conservative liberalism (right-liberalism).
A series of "national-liberal" political parties, by ideology or just by name, were especially active in Europe in the 19th century in several national contexts such as Central Europe, the Nordic countries, and Southeastern Europe.
National liberalism was primarily a 19th-century ideology and a movement.
National liberal goals were the pursuit of individual and economic freedom and national sovereignty. József Antall, a historian and Christian democrat who served as the first post-communist Prime Minister of Hungary, described national liberalism as "part and parcel of the emergence of the nation state" in 19th-century Europe.
According to Oskar Mulej, "in terms of both ideologies and political party traditions it may be argued that in the Central European lands a distinct type of liberalism, peculiar to this region evolved through the nineteenth century" and citing Maciej Janowski, "the word 'national' acted as more or less synonymous with 'liberal'" ("'national' alone was sufficient to arouse suspicions of liberal associations"). Also according to Mulej, in Southeast Europe "'national liberals' also played visible if not central roles, but with rather different, region-specific characteristics, which to a considerable extent distinguished them from their Central European counterparts."
In his book Up From Conservatism, Michael Lind defines national liberalism in a way that The Progressive describes as matching the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.'s use of the expression "Vital Center". Lind himself defines national liberalism as uniting "moderate social conservatism with moderate economic liberalism".
Gordon Smith, a leading scholar of comparative European politics, understands national liberalism as a political concept that lost popularity when the success of nationalist movements in creating nation states rendered it no longer necessary to specify that a liberal ideal, party or politician was "national".
Official source
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