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The history of liberalism spans the better part of the last four centuries, beginning in the English Civil War and continuing after the end of the Cold War. Liberalism started as a major doctrine and intellectual endeavor in response to the religious wars gripping Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, although the historical context for the ascendancy of liberalism goes back to the Middle Ages. The first notable incarnation of liberal agitation came with the American Revolution, and liberalism fully exploded as a comprehensive movement against the old order during the French Revolution, which set the pace for the future development of human history. Classical liberals, who broadly emphasized the importance of free markets and civil liberties, dominated liberal history for a century after the French Revolution. The onset of the First World War and the Great Depression, however, accelerated the trends begun in late 19th century Britain towards a new liberalism that emphasized a greater role for the state in ameliorating devastating social conditions. By the beginning of the 21st century, liberal democracies and their fundamental characteristics—support for constitutions, free and fair elections, pluralistic society, and the welfare state—had prevailed in most regions around the world.

Prelude

After centuries of dominance, the Roman Empire irrevocably splintered in 476. The eastern part of the Roman world became the Byzantine Empire and the western part fractured into a series of kingdoms that collectively represented a shadow of the erstwhile Roman eagle. Despite these enormous geopolitical changes, however, one constant remained to give Europe a certain sense of unity and stability: Christianity. Originally insulted as a fringe cult, Christians were persecuted for centuries after the death of Jesus, but they spread efficiently throughout the empire despite constant harassment from Roman authorities, appealing especially to the poor and those at the bottom of the social ladder. When Constantine integrated Christians into Roman life in the fourth century, the stage was set for the eventual domination of the Christian religion. Although the Roman Empire collapsed and splintered, Christianity was sufficiently entrenched into the fabric of society to survive the resulting sociopolitical chaos that characterized the period.

Christianity provided the post-Roman European world with a sense of purpose and direction. European experiences during the Middle Ages were often characterized by fear, uncertainty, and warfare—the latter being especially endemic in medieval life. Christian societies largely believed that history unfolded according to a divine plan over which humans had little control. Something of a quid pro quo relationship emerged between the Catholic Church and regional rulers: the Church gave kings and queens authority to rule while the latter spread the message of the Christian faith and did the bidding of Christian social and military forces. It was an astute, symbiotic relationship in a world rife with uncertainty and danger. For much of the Middle Ages, the authority of the Church was virtually unquestioned and unquestionable. Leaders who challenged that authority were often severely rebuked and sometimes even publicly embarrassed, as evidenced by Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV waiting barefoot in the snow at the fort of Canossa to receive forgiveness from the Pope. The world was very pious and religion permeated all aspects of life. The influence of the Church can be seen by the fact that the very term often referred to European society as a whole. When it invoked the will of God in 1095, the Church set the stage for dozens of crusades against pagans, Muslims, and various other groups.

The Church experienced fortunate times that lasted for centuries, but outside events and internal struggles crippled the power of the greatest institution in European life. In the 14th century, disputes over papal successions—and, indeed, over just who was the Pope and who was not—rocked the Western world. These disputes significantly harmed the reputation of the Church. The middle of the 14th century also witnessed the spread of the Black Death, which exterminated perhaps up to one-third of the European population—some 20 million humans gone in just a few years. These enormous fatality rates incensed people across the continent, and much of their rage was directed at the Church, which was viewed as ineffectual in the face of such carnage. The Black Death had a profound influence on future European history, laying the groundwork—through peasant uprisings and the eventual emergence of a small class of property owners—for the eventual pluralism that became a hallmark of the liberal world.

The emergence of the Renaissance in the 15th century also helped to weaken unquestioning submission to the Church by reinvigorating interest in science and in the classical world. In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation developed from sentiments that viewed the Church as an oppressive ruling order too involved in the feudal and baronial structure of European society. In response to the Protestant Reformation, the Church launched a Counter Reformation to contain the bubbling sentiments, but this effort ultimately unraveled in the Thirty Years War, a deadly European conflict that lasted from 1618 until 1648. The war saw Catholic forces suffer massive defeats, and the religious unity of Europe was shattered. In England, disputes between the Parliament and King Charles I sparked a massive civil war in the 1640s. Charles was executed in 1649 and the Parliament ultimately succeeded—with the Glorious Revolution of 1688—in establishing a limited and constitutional monarchy after centuries of chaos. These frenzied events sparked a deluge of social and political dialogue in English intellectual circles. The main facets of early liberal ideology emerged from these discussions, and historians Colton and Palmer characterize the period in the following light:

The unique thing about England was that Parliament, in defeating the king, arrived at a workable form of government. Government remained strong but came under parliamentary control. This determined the character of modern England and launched into the history of Europe and of the world the great movement of liberalism.

Beginning

The early hero of that movement, the founder of liberal thought as a distinct ideology and the frequently identified Father of Liberalism, was an English physician and philosopher whose words later inspired revolutions: John Locke. Locke debated recent political controversies with some of the most famous intellectuals of the day, but his greatest rival was Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes and Locke looked at the political world and disagreed on several substiantial issues, although their arguments inspired later social contract theories outlining the relationship between people and their governments. Their political sympathies and affiliations certainly inspired their ideas. Hobbes supported the monarchy and Locke backed Parliament. Hobbes was a fan of centralized, dictatorial authority. He wanted government to be modeled after Leviathan, a mythical sea monster from the Bible. Locke preferred the legislature because he felt that Parliament embodied the will of the people. Locke developed a relatively radical political notion that earned him the paternal liberal sobriquet, arguing that government acquires consent from the governed. His celebrated Two Treatises (1690), the foundational text of liberal ideology, outlined his major ideas. Once humans moved out of their natural state and formed societies, Locke argued as follows: "Thus that which begins and actually constitutes any political society is nothing but the consent of any number of freemen capable of a majority to unite and incorporate into such a society. And this is that, and that only, which did or could give beginning to any lawful government in the world." The stringent insistence that lawful government did not have a supernatural basis was a sharp break with most previous traditions of governance. One political scientist described this new thinking as follows: "In the liberal understanding, there are no citizens within the regime who can claim to rule by natural or supernatural right, without the consent of the governed".

Locke had other intellectual opponents besides Hobbes. In the First Treatise, Locke aimed his guns first and foremost at one of the doyens of 17th century English conservative philosophy: Robert Filmer. Filmer's Patriarcha (1680) argued for the Divine Right of Kings by appealing to biblical teaching, claiming that the authority granted to Adam by God gave successors of Adam in the male line of descent a right of dominion over all other humans and creatures in the world. Locke disagreed so thoroughly and obsessively with Filmer, however, that the First Treatise is almost a sentence-by-sentence refutation of Patriarcha. Reinforcing his respect for consensus, Locke argued that "conjugal society is made up by a voluntary compact between men and women". Locke maintained that the grant of dominion in Genesis was not to men over women, as Filmer believed, but to humans over animals. Locke was certainly no feminist by modern standards, but the first major liberal thinker in history accomplished an equally major task on the road to making the world more pluralistic: the integration of women into social theory.

The intellectual journey of liberalism continued beyond Locke. French philosopher René Descartes asked in the 17th century if there were any beliefs that one could hold a priori. He concluded that self-existence—"I think, therefore I am"—and the existence of a supernatural deity were two such beliefs. Descartes was looking for absolute certainty because of his deep skepticism about received knowledge. Once Descartes introduced systematic doubt as a formal philosophy, the intelligentsia of the European world took up the banner and spearheaded the Enlightenment, a period of profound intellectual vitality that questioned old traditions and influenced several European monarchies throughout the 18th century. A prominent example of a monarch who took the Enlightenment project seriously was Joseph II of Austria, who ruled from 1780 to 1790 and implemented a wide array of radical reforms, such as the complete abolition of serfdom, the imposition of equal taxation policies between the aristocracy and the peasantry, the institution of religious toleration, including equal civil rights for Jews, and the suppression of Catholic religious authority throughout his empire, creating a more secular nation. The ideas circulating in the Enlightenment did not exist in a vacuum, a fact to which the Americans and later the French, with permanent consequences for human history, paid much tribute.

Era of revolution

The American colonies had been loyal British subjects for decades, but tensions between the two sides were exacerbated by the Seven Years War, which lasted from 1756 until 1763. The war drained British coffers and forced the monarchy to squeeze more and more resources from its recalcitrant colonies. The colonies resented this taxation without representation and decided, after a myriad of internal discussions and petitions to the British government, that they would declare independence and face the consequences. The Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, echoed Locke convincingly: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". Military engagements in the American Revolution began in 1775 and were largely complete by 1781, when a Franco-American army combined with a French fleet bottled up thousands of British troops at Yorktown. The American Revolution formally concluded in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris, in which the British recognized American independence.

After the war, the colonies debated about how to move forward. Their first attempt at cooperation transpired under the Articles of Confederation, which were eventually regarded as too inadequate to provide security, or even a functional government. The colonies held a Constitutional Convention in 1787 to resolve the problems stemming from the Articles of Confederation. The resulting Constitution of the United States was a monumental document in American history and in world history as well. In the context of the times, the Constitution was an extremely revolutionary and liberal document. The Americans skipped the monarchical system and settled on a republic, laying the groundwork for over two centuries of liberal democratic expansion throughout the globe. The Constitution revealed the degree to which the Enlightenment had influenced the American colonies. The basic fabric of the new American government was lifted from the pages of a French philosopher, the Baron de Montesquieu, whose Spirit of Laws (1748) laid the framework for a republic with three branches of government: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. The American theorists and politicians who created the Constitution were also heavily influenced by the ideas of Locke. As one historian writes: "The American adoption of a democratic theory that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, as it had been put as early as the Declaration of Independence, was epoch-marking". The American Revolution was an important struggle in liberal history, and it was quickly followed by the most important: the French Revolution.

Three years into the French Revolution, German writer Johann von Goethe reportedly told the defeated Prussian soldiers after the Battle of Valmy that "from this place and from this time forth commences a new era in world history, and you can all say that you were present at its birth". Historians widely regard the Revolution as one of the most important events in human history, and the end of the early modern period is attributed to the onset of the Revolution in 1789. The Revolution is often seen as marking the "dawn of the modern era," and its convulsions are widely associated with "the triumph of liberalism". Describing the participatory politics of the French Revolution, one historian commented that "thousands of men and even many women gained firsthand experience in the political arena: they talked, read, and listened in new ways; they voted; they joined new organizations; and they marched for their political goals. Revolution became a tradition, and republicanism an enduring option". For liberals, the Revolution was their defining moment, and later liberals approved of the French Revolution almost entirely—"not only its results but the act itself," as two historians noted.

The French Revolution began in 1789 with the convocation of the Estates-General in May. The first year of the Revolution witnessed members of the Third Estate proclaiming the Tennis Court Oath in June, the Storming of the Bastille in July, the passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen in August, and an epic march on Versailles that forced the royal court back to Paris in October. The next few years were dominated by tensions between various liberal assemblies and a conservative monarchy intent on thwarting major reforms. A republic was proclaimed in September 1792 and King Louis XVI was executed the following year. External events also played a dominant role in the development of the Revolution. The French Revolutionary Wars started in 1792 and ultimately led to spectacular French victories: the conquest of the Italian peninsula, the Low Countries, and most territories west of the Rhine—achievements that had eluded previous French governments for centuries. Internally, popular sentiments radicalized the Revolution, culminating in the brutal Reign of Terror from 1793 until 1794. After the fall of Robespierre and the Jacobins, the Directory assumed control of the French state in 1795 and held power until 1799, when it was replaced by the Consulate under Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon ruled as First Consul for about five years, centralizing power and streamlining the bureaucracy along the way. The Napoleonic Wars, pitting the heirs of a revolutionary state against the old monarchies of Europe, started in 1805 and lasted for a decade. Along with their boots and Charleville muskets, French soldiers brought to the rest of the European continent the liquidation of the feudal system, the liberalization of property laws, the end of seigneurial dues, the abolition of guilds, the legalization of divorce, the disintegration of Jewish ghettos, the collapse of the Inquisition, the permanent destruction of the Holy Roman Empire, the elimination of church courts and religious authority, the establishment of the metric system, and equality under the law for all men. Napoleon wrote that "the peoples of Germany, as of France, Italy and Spain, want equality and liberal ideas," with some historians suggesting that he may have been the first person ever to use the word liberal in a political sense. He also governed through a method that one historian described as "civilian dictatorship," which "drew its legitimacy from direct consultation with the people, in the form of a plebiscite". Napoleon did not always live up the liberal ideals he espoused, however. His most lasting achievement, the Civil Code, served as "an object of emulation all over the globe," but it also perpetuated further discrimination against women under the banner of the "natural order".

Stubborn French ambitions combined with a long conflict against Britain, the failure of the Continental System, and the catastrophe in Russia eventually led to the collapse of the First Empire in 1815 at the fields of Waterloo, where the Imperial Guard made its last stand under the rhythms of the Marseillaise, which was banned in the Bourbon Restoration. Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian foreign minister, constructed the basis for the conservative decades that stretched into the middle of the 19th century. This unprecedented period of chaos and revolution, however, had introduced the world to a new movement and ideology that would soon crisscross the globe.

Children of revolution

The world after the French Revolution provided liberals with an opportunity to reshape the basic structures of society. Abolitionist and suffrage movements took off in the 19th century throughout the Western world. Slowly but surely, democratic ideals were spreading. Parliamentary power in Britain increased, France established an enduring republic in the 1870s, and a vicious war in the United States ensured the survival of that nation and signaled the end of slavery. Meanwhile, strange assortments of liberal and nationalist sentiments were on the march in Italy and Germany, which finally coalesced into nations in the late 19th century. Liberal agitation in Latin America reached a fever pitch as the region was gradually brought into the common social and political patterns of the modern world.

Liberals after the Revolution wanted to develop a world free from government intervention, or at least free from too much government intervention. They championed the ideal of negative liberty, which constitutes the absence of coercion and the absence of external constraints. They believed governments were cumbersome burdens and they wanted governments to stay out of the lives of individuals. Liberals simultaneously pushed for the expansion of civil rights and for the expansion of free markets and free trade. The latter kind of economic thinking had been formalized by Adam Smith in his monumental Wealth of Nations (1776), which revolutionized the field of economics and established the "invisible hand" of the free market as a self-regulating mechanism that did not depend on external interference. Sheltered by liberalism, the laissez-faire economic world of the 19th century emerged with full tenacity, particularly in the United States and in the United Kingdom.

Politically, liberals saw the 19th century as a gateway to achieving the promises of 1789. In Spain, the Liberales, the first group to use the liberal label in a political context, fought for the implementation of the 1812 Constitution for decades—overthrowing the monarchy in 1820 as part of the Trienio Liberal and defeating the conservative Carlists in the 1830s. In France, the July Revolution of 1830, orchestrated by liberal politicians and journalists, removed the Bourbon monarchy and inspired similar uprisings elsewhere in Europe. Frustration with the pace of political progress, however, sparked even more gigantic revolutions in 1848. Revolutions spread throughout the Austrian Empire, the German states, and the Italian states. Governments fell rapidly. Liberal nationalists demanded written constitutions, representative assemblies, greater suffrage rights, and freedom of the press. A second republic was proclaimed in France. Serfdom was abolished in Prussia, Galicia, Bohemia, and Hungary. The supposedly indomitable Metternich, the Austrian builder of the reigning conservative order, shocked Europe when he resigned and fled to Britain in panic and disguise. Eventually, however, the success of the revolutionaries petered out. Without French help, the Italians were easily defeated by the Austrians. With some luck and skill, Austria also managed to contain the bubbling nationalist sentiments in Germany and Hungary, helped along by the failure of the Frankfurt Assembly to unify the German states into a single nation. Under abler leadership, however, the Italians and the Germans wound up realizing their dreams for independence. The Sardinian Prime Minister, Camillo di Cavour, was a shrewd liberal who understood that the only effective way for the Italians to gain independence was if the French were on their side. Napoleon III agreed to Cavour's request for assistance and France defeated Austria in the Franco-Austrian War of 1859, setting the stage for Italian independence. German unification transpired under the leadership of Otto von Bismarck, who decimated the enemies of Prussia in war after war, finally triumphing against France in 1871 and proclaiming the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, ending another saga in the drive for nationalization. The French proclaimed a third republic after their loss in the war, and the rest of French history transpired under republican eyes.

Just a few decades after the French Revolution, liberalism went global. The liberal and conservative struggles in Spain also replicated themselves in Latin America. Like its former master, the region was a hotbed of wars, conflicts, and revolutionary activity throughout the 19th century. In Mexico, the liberales instituted the program of La Reforma in the 1850s, reducing the power of the military and the Catholic Church. The conservadores were outraged at these steps and launched a revolt, which sparked a deadly conflict. From 1857 to 1861, Mexico was gripped in the bloody War of Reform, a massive internal and ideological confrontation between the liberals and the conservatives. The liberals eventually triumphed and Benito Juárez, a dedicated liberal and now a Mexican national hero, became the president of the republic. After Juárez, Mexico suffered from prolonged periods of dictatorial repression, which lasted until the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century. Another regional example of liberal influence can be found in Ecuador. As with other nations throughout the region at the time, Ecuador was steeped in conflict and uncertainty after gaining independence from Spain. By the middle of the 19th century, the country had descended into chaos and madness, with the people divided between rival liberal and conservative camps. From these conflicts, García Moreno established a conservative government that ruled the country for several years. The liberals, however, were incensed at the conservative regime and overthrew it completely in the Liberal Revolution of 1895. The Radical Liberals who toppled the conservatives were led by Eloy Alfaro, a firebrand who implemented a variety of sociopolitical reforms, including the separation of church and state, the legalization of divorce, and the establishment of public schools.

Liberals were active throughout the world in the 19th century, but it was in Britain that the future character of liberalism would take shape. The liberal sentiments unleashed after the revolutionary era of the previous century ultimately coalesced into the Liberal Party, formed in 1859 from various Radical and Whig elements. The Liberals produced one of the greatest British prime ministers—William Gladstone, who was also known as the Grand Old Man. Under Gladstone, the Liberals reformed education, disestablished the Church of Ireland, and introduced the secret ballot for local and parliamentary elections. Following Gladstone, and after a period of Conservative domination, the Liberals returned with full strength in the general election of 1906, aided by working class voters worried about food prices. After that historic victory, the Liberal Party shifted from its classical liberalism and laid the groundwork for the future British welfare state, establishing various forms of health insurance, unemployment insurance, and pensions for elderly workers. The intellectual foundations for this new liberalism were coherently established by philosopher Thomas Hill Green, who conceived of positive liberty as the freedom of the individual to achieve his or her potential. After various global and catastrophic events, including wars and economic collapses, this new kind of liberalism would sweep over much of the world in the 20th century.

Wars and renewal

The 20th century started perilously for liberalism. The First World War sparked geopolitical turmoil throughout the European continent and threatened to unravel the success of liberal democracy. However, the Allies managed to win and the number of republics in Europe reached 13 by the end of the war, as compared with only three at the start of the war in 1914. The Russian Revolution, which occurred during the war, marked another milestone on the road of modernity. The eventual communist victory and the creation of the Soviet Union highlighted the threat that liberalism now faced from a new and dangerous enemy. Meanwhile, the uncertain world that emerged from the cauldron of the First World War suffered from massive economic setbacks in the years following 1918. Inflation skyrocketed in many European nations and the stock market in the United States collapsed in 1929, triggering a series of recessions throughout the Western world that became collectively known as the Great Depression. Liberalism survived, winning out against fascism in the Second World War before facing off against communism for several more decades during the Cold War.

World War I proved a major challenge for liberal democracies, although they ultimately defeated the dictatorial states of the Central Powers. The war precipitated the collapse of older forms of government, including empires and dynastic states, a phenomenon that became quite apparent in Russia. The massive defeats that Russia sustained in the first few years of World War I significantly tainted the reputation of the monarchy, already reeling from earlier losses to Japan and political struggles with the Kadets, a powerful liberal bloc in the Duma. Facing huge shortages in basic necessities along with widespread riots in early 1917, Czar Nicholas II abdicated in March, bringing to an end three centuries of Romanov rule and paving the way for liberals to declare a republic. To Russia's liberals, the French Revolution was the centerpiece of human history, and they repeatedly used the slogans, symbols, and ideas of the Revolution—plastering liberté, égalité, fraternité over major public spaces—to establish an emotional attachment to the past, an attachment that liberals hoped would galvanize the public to fight for modern values. But democracy was no simple task, and the Provisional Government that took over the country's administration needed the cooperation of the Petrograd Soviet, an organization that united leftist industrial laborers, to function and survive. Under the uncertain leadership of Alexander Kerensky, however, the Provisional Government mismanaged Russia's continuing involvement in the war, prompting angry reactions from the Petrograd workers, who drifted further and further to the left. The Bolsheviks, a communist group led by Vladimir Lenin, seized the political opportunity from this confusion and launched a second revolution in Russia during the same year. The communists violently overthrew the fragile liberal-socialist order in October, after which Russia witnessed several years of civil war between communists and conservatives wishing to restore the monarchy. The communist challenge to liberalism, however, paled in comparison to the economic problems that rocked the Western world in the 1930s.

The Great Depression fundamentally changed the liberal world. It was such a calamitous period in Western civilization that the civilization itself appeared on the verge of complete collapse. There was an inkling of a new liberalism during the First World War, and even earlier in the 19th century among some states and regions, but modern liberalism finally hatched in the 1930s with the Great Depression and a new economic mastermind whose ideas formalized the responsibilities of the modern state in its administration of the economy: John Maynard Keynes. Classical liberals posited that completely free markets were the optimal economic units capable of effectively allocating resources—that over time, in other words, they would produce full employment and economic security. Keynes spearheaded a broad assault on classical economics and its followers, arguing that totally free markets were not ideal, and that hard economic times required intervention and investment from the state. Where the market failed to properly allocate resources, for example, the government was required to stimulate the economy until private funds could start flowing again—a "prime the pump" kind of strategy designed to boost industrial production.

The social liberal program launched by President Roosevelt in the United States, the New Deal, proved very popular with the American public. In 1933, when FDR came into office, the unemployment rate stood at roughly 25 percent. The size of the economy, measured by the gross national product, had fallen to half the value it had in early 1929. The electoral victories of FDR and the Democrats precipitated a deluge of deficit spending and public works programs. In 1940, the level of unemployment had fallen by 10 points to around 15 percent. Additional state spending and the gigantic public works program sparked by the Second World War eventually pulled the United States out of the Great Depression. From 1940 to 1941, government spending increased by 59 percent, the gross domestic product skyrocketed 17 percent, and unemployment fell below 10 percent for the first time since 1929. By 1945, after vast government spending, public debt stood at a staggering 120 percent of GNP, but unemployment had been effectively eliminated. Most nations that emerged from the Great Depression did so with deficit spending and strong intervention from the state.

The economic woes of the period prompted widespread unrest in the European political world, leading to the rise of fascism as an ideology and a movement arrayed against both liberalism and communism. Broadly speaking, fascist ideology emphasized elite rule and absolute leadership, a radical rejection of equality, the imposition of patriarchal society, a stern commitment to war as an instrument of natural behavior, the elimination of supposedly inferior or subhuman groups from the structure of the nation, and the conception of life as an "unending struggle" in which the strong would destroy and dominate the weak. In Germany, the Nazis slighted the first year of the French Revolution: "1789 is abolished". Echoing the Germans, Mussolini stated that "we stand for a new principle in the world; we stand for the sheer, categorical, definitive antithesis to the world of democracy...to the world which still abides by the fundamental principles laid down in 1789". Hitler went further, commenting that the chief principle of fascism was "to abolish the liberal concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity, and to substitute for them the Volk community, rooted in the soil and united by the bond of its common blood". The fascist and nationalist grievances of the 1930s eventually culminated in the Second World War, the deadliest conflict in human history. The Allies prevailed in the war by 1945, and their victory set the stage for the Cold War between communist states and liberal democracies.

The Cold War featured extensive ideological competition and several proxy wars, but the widely feared Third World War between the Soviet Union and the United States never occurred. While communist states and liberal democracies competed against one another, an economic crisis in the 1970s inspired a temporary move away from Keynesian economics across many Western governments. This classical liberal renewal, known as neoliberalism, lasted through the 1980s and the 1990s, although recent economic troubles have prompted a resurgence in Keynesian economic thought. Meanwhile, nearing the end of the 20th century, communist states in Eastern Europe collapsed precipitously, leaving liberal democracies as the only major forms of government in the West. At the beginning of the Second World War, the number of democracies around the world was about the same as it had been forty years before. After 1945, liberal democracies spread very quickly. Even as late as 1974, roughly 75 percent of all nations were considered dictatorial, but now more than half of all countries are democracies. This last achievement speaks volumes about the influence of liberalism, and it prompted American intellectual Francis Fukuyama, speculating on the "end of history," to make the following claim:

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such; that is, the end point of...ideological evolution and the universalization of...liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

Trends and themes

The impact of liberalism on the modern world is profound. The ideas of individual liberty, personal dignity, free expression, religious tolerance, private property, universal human rights, transparency of government, limitations on government power, popular sovereignty, national self-determination, privacy, "enlightened" and "rational" policy, the rule of law, respect for science, fundamental equality, a free market economy, and free trade were all radical notions some 250 years ago. Liberal democracy, in its typical form of multiparty political pluralism, has spread to much of the world. Today all of these ideals are accepted as the goals of policy in most nations, even where there is a wide gap between what governments say and what they do. Not only liberal parties honor these principles, but social democrats, conservatives, and Christian Democrats at least pay lip service to them as well. Most debate is within a liberal framework. This has led to the word "liberal" being used in many different ways.

Elitism and democracy

Critics of liberalism, such as Edmund Burke, feared that it would lead to mob rule, and pointed to the excesses of the French Revolution, to claim that a monarchy and an established religion led to stability and security. John Locke did not believe in liberty for the Negro. On the eve of the American Civil War, the Supreme Court of the United States, in the Dred Scott decision, ruled that only White men were included in the rights granted by the Constitution and that other races had no rights whatsoever, either legal or moral, that the White man was obligated to recognize.

However, the history of liberalism has been a history of ever wider extension of the ideal of freedom. In 1867, New Zealand allowed non-Whites to vote, and in 1893, they became the first nation to allow women to vote, followed by Australia in 1894. (Australia did not allow Blacks to vote until 1962.) In 1870, The United States of America officially extended the vote to Blacks, although in many parts of the country methods were found to prevent Blacks from voting. Women were allowed to vote in the United States in 1920, while women in the United Kingdom were granted equal voting rights with men in 1928 (women over 30 who met certain property qualifications had been entitled to vote since 1918). Outside the West, women were given the right to vote in Japan in 1946; in Iran in 1963. Women are still not allowed to vote in Saudi Arabia and in a few other countries. Property restrictions, religious restrictions, and age restrictions on voting rights have also been eased in most nations over the last 200 years, so that now almost all members of the United Nations (at least in theory) allow universal suffrage for citizens age 18 years or older, with some exceptions based on mental incapacity or criminal conviction.

Economic liberalism

Free market

Economic liberals today stress the importance of a free market and free trade, and seek to limit government intervention in both the domestic economy and foreign trade. Social liberal movements often agree in principle with the idea of free trade, but maintain some skepticism, seeing unrestricted trade as leading to the growth of multi-national corporations and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few. In the post-war consensus on the welfare state in Europe, liberals supported government responsibility for health, education, and alleviating poverty while still calling for a market based on independent exchange. Liberals agree that a high quality of health care and education should be available for all citizens, but differ in their views on the degree to which governments should supply these benefits. Liberal movements seek a balance between individual responsibility and community responsibility. In particular, many liberals favor special protection for children and old people, as well as the sick and the disabled, and the aged.

European liberalism turned back to more laissez-faire policies in the 1980s and 1990s, and supported privatisation of industry. Modern European liberals generally believe that governments have gone too far in providing for their citizens, and decry what they call the "nanny state". It is important to distinguish, however, between government provision of health care and education, which most European liberals support, and government ownership of industry, which most European liberals oppose.

The debate between personal liberty and social optimality occupies much of the theory of liberalism since the Second World War, particularly centering around the questions of social choice and market mechanisms required to produce a "liberal" society. One of the central parts of this argument concerns Kenneth Arrow's General Possibility Theorem. This thesis states that there is no consistent social choice function which satisfies unbounded decision making, independence of choices, Pareto optimality, and non-dictatorship. In short, according to the thesis which includes the problem of liberal paradox, it is not possible to have unlimited liberty, a maximum amount of utility, and an unlimited range of choices at the same time. Another important argument within liberalism is the importance of rationality in decision-making (whether people make decisions rationally or irrationally). There is also the question of the relationship, if any, between freedom and material inequality.

Libertarians phrase this debate in terms of positive rights and negative rights. By positive rights they mean such things as the "right" to an education, the "right" to healthcare, or the "right" to a minimum wage. By negative rights they mean such things as the "right" to enforce contracts, the "right" of protection against lawlessness, and the "right" to be left alone by the government as long as you honor contracts and obey the law.

Utilitarians use different language for the same ideas. Instead of the word "rights" they use the word "good", and argue that an educated, healthy populace, able to support itself by its labor, is for the "good" of society.

Key liberal thinkers, such as Lujo Brentano, Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse, Thomas Hill Green, John Maynard Keynes, Bertil Ohlin and John Dewey, described how a government should intervene in the economy to protect liberty while avoiding socialism. These liberals developed the theory of social liberalism (also "new liberalism," not to be confused with present-day neoliberalism). Social liberals rejected both radical capitalism and the revolutionary elements of the socialist school. John Maynard Keynes, in particular, had a significant impact on liberal thought throughout the world. The Liberal Party in Britain, particularly since Lloyd George's People's Budget, was heavily influenced by Keynes, as was the Liberal International, the Oxford Liberal Manifesto of 1947 of the world organization of liberal parties. In the United States and in Canada, the influence of Keynesianism on Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and on William Lyon Mackenzie King has led social liberalism to be identified with American liberalism and Canadian liberalism.

Other liberals, including F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Ludwig von Mises, argued that the great depression was not a result of "laissez-faire" capitalism but a result of too much government intervention and regulation upon the market. In Friedman's work "Capitalism and Freedom" he discussed government regulation that occurred before the great depression, including heavy regulations upon banks that prevented them, he argued, from reacting to the markets' demand for money. Furthermore, the U.S. Federal government had created a fixed currency pegged to the value of gold. At first the pegged value created a massive surplus of gold, but later the pegged value was too low, which created an equally massive migration of gold from the U.S. Friedman and Hayek both believed that this inability to react to currency demand created a run on the banks that the banks were no longer able to handle, and that the currency demand combined with fixed exchange rates between the dollar and gold both worked to cause the Great Depression, by creating, and then not fixing, deflationary pressures. He further argued in this thesis, that the government inflicted more pain upon the American public by first raising taxes, then by printing money to pay debts (thus causing inflation), the combination of which helped to wipe out the savings of the middle class.

In 1974 Hayek was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for, among other reasons, his theory of business cycles and his conception of the effects of monetary and credit policies, and for being "one of the few economists who gave warning of the possibility of a major economic crisis before the great crash came in the autumn of 1929."

In the 21st Century, the debate is often put in terms of the conflict between states and multinational corporations. Conservatives tend to distrust states, and see liberty as arising spontaneously from unrestricted international trade. Liberals tend to distrust corporations, and look to states to protect liberty.

Environment

Many liberals share values with environmentalists, such as the Green Party. They seek to minimize the damage done by the human species on the natural world, and to maximize the regeneration of damaged areas. Some such activists attempt to make changes on an economic level by acting together with businesses, but others favor legislation in order to achieve sustainable development. Other liberals do not accept government regulation in this matter and argue that the market should regulate itself in some fashion.

International relations

There is no consensus about liberal doctrine in international politics, though there are some central notions, which can be deduced from, for example, the opinions of Liberal International. Social liberals often believe that war can be abolished. Some favor internationalism, and support the United Nations. Economic liberals, on the other hand, favor non-interventionism rather than collective security. Liberals believe in the right of every individual to enjoy the essential human liberties, and support self-determination for national minorities. Essential also is the free exchange of ideas, news, goods and services between people, as well as freedom of travel within and between all countries. Liberals generally oppose censorship, protective trade barriers, and exchange regulations.

Some liberals were among the strongest advocates of international co-operation and the building of supra-national organizations, such as the European Union. In the view of social liberals, a global free and fair market can only work if companies worldwide respect a set of common minimal social and ecological standards. A controversial question, on which there is no liberal consensus, is immigration. Do nations have a right to limit the flow of immigrants from countries with growing populations to countries with stable or declining populations?

Role of the State

From the beginning of liberal thinking, there was a vigorous debate over the proper role of the state. For example, in the newly founded United States government, a government based on liberal principles, Thomas Paine accused George Washington of trying to set himself up as a king, while John Adams supported Washington, arguing that a strong federal government was necessary to prevent mob rule. Benjamin Franklin discussed the question of what measures a liberal government should take to protect the poor.

This debate has continued throughout modern history. To what extent should a liberal government take an active role in the welfare of its citizens? By the end of the 19th century, some liberals asserted that, in order to be free, individuals needed access to food, shelter, and education, and government protection from exploitation. In 1911, L.T. Hobhouse published Liberalism, which summarized these ideas, including qualified acceptance of government intervention in the economy, and the collective right to equality in dealings, what he called "just consent."

Opposed to these changes was a strain of liberalism which became increasingly anti-government, in some cases adopting anarchism. Gustave de Molinari in France and Herbert Spencer in England were prominent examples of this trend.

The debate continues today.

Philosophical foundations for liberalism

In 1810, the German Wilhelm von Humboldt developed the modern concepts of liberalism in his book The Limits of State Action. John Stuart Mill popularized and expanded these ideas in On Liberty (1859) and other works. He opposed collectivist tendencies while placing emphasis on quality of life for the individual. He also had sympathy for female suffrage and (later in life) for labor co-operatives.

One of Mill's most important contributions was his utilitarian justification of liberalism. Mill grounded liberal ideas in the instrumental and pragmatic, allowing the unification of subjective ideas of liberty gained from the French thinkers in the tradition of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the more rights-based philosophies of John Locke in the British tradition.

A third school of thought is based on the social contract theory. According to this view, agents negotiating about the form of society would create a liberal society. There are several variants of this theory, some of them reaching contradiciting conclusions. Famous proponents of this theory that have at least certain liberal elements include Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke and Immanuel Kant. In modern times, proponents include John Rawls, Robert Nozick, David Gauthier and Jan Narveson.

The exact limits of these different philosophical foundations may sometimes be vague, and may overlap. Some thinkers may espouse influences from several of them. For instance, Thomas Jefferson emphasized the importance of protecting natural rights, but he also wrote that the aim of government is the happiness of the people. Locke held a belief in natural rights, but he also believed that people entered into a social contract (in order to protect those rights).

Democracy

The relationship between liberalism and democracy may be summed up by Winston Churchill's famous remark, "...democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms..." In short, there is nothing about democracy per se that guarantees freedom rather than a tyranny of the masses. The coinage liberal democracy suggests a more harmonious marriage between the two principles than actually exists. Liberals strive after the replacement of absolutism by limited government: government by consent. The idea of consent suggests democracy. At the same time, the founders of the first liberal democracies feared both government power and mob rule, and so they built into the constitutions of liberal democracies both checks and balances intended to limit the power of government by dividing those powers among several branches, and a bill of rights intended to protect the rights of individuals. For liberals, democracy is not an end in itself, but an essential means to secure liberty, individuality and diversity.

Extension of liberalism to the disadvantaged

Civil rights

Liberalism advocates civil rights for all citizens: the protection and privileges of personal liberty extended to all citizens equally by law. This includes the equal treatment of all citizens irrespective of race, gender, sexual orientation and class. Critics from an internationalist human rights school of thought argue that the civil rights advocated in the liberal view are not extended to all people, but are limited to citizens of particular states. Unequal treatment on the basis of nationality is therefore possible, especially in regard to citizenship itself.

Liberals generally believe in neutral government, in the sense that it is not for the state to determine personal values. As John Rawls put it, "The state has no right to determine a particular conception of the good life". In the United States this neutrality is expressed in the Declaration of Independence as the right to the pursuit of happiness. Both in Europe and in the United States, liberals often support the pro-choice movement and advocate equal rights for women and the LGBTQ community.

Liberals in Europe are generally hostile to any attempts by the state to enforce equality in employment by legal action against employers, whereas in the United States many social liberals favor such affirmative action. Liberals in general support equal opportunity, but not necessarily equal outcome. Most European liberal parties do not favour employment quotas for women and ethnic minorities as the best way to end gender and racial inequality. However, all agree that arbitrary discrimination on the basis of race or gender is morally wrong.

Rule of law

The rule of law and equality before the law are fundamental to liberalism. Government authority may only be legitimately exercised in accordance with laws that are adopted through an established procedure. Another aspect of the rule of law is an insistence upon the guarantee of an independent judiciary, whose political independence is intended to act as a safeguard against arbitrary rulings in individual cases. The rule of law includes concepts such as the presumption of innocence, no double jeopardy, and habeas corpus. Rule of law is seen by liberals as a guard against despotism and as enforcing limitations on the power of government. In the penal system, liberals in general reject punishments they see as inhumane, including capital punishment

Variations

Today the word "liberalism" is used differently in different countries. (See Liberalism worldwide.) One of the greatest contrasts is between the usage in the United States and usage in the rest of the world, most sharply in Continental Europe. In the US, liberalism is usually understood to refer to social liberalism, as contrasted with conservatism. American liberals endorse regulation for business, a limited social welfare state, and support broad racial, ethnic, sexual and religious tolerance, and thus more readily embrace Pluralism, and affirmative action. In Europe, on the other hand, liberalism is characterized by beliefs in free trade and limited government; it is not only contrasted with conservatism and Christian Democracy, but also with socialism and social democracy. In some countries, European liberals share common positions with Christian Democrats.

The Liberal International is the main international organisation of liberal parties. It affirms the following principles: human rights, free and fair elections and multiparty-democracy, social justice, tolerance, social market economy, free trade, economic freedom, environmental sustainability and a strong sense of international solidarity. These ideals are described in further detail in the various manifestos of the LI.

Before an explanation of this subject proceeds, it is important to add this disclaimer: There is always a disconnect between philosophical ideals and political realities. Also, opponents of any belief are apt to describe that belief in different terms from those used by adherents. What follows is a record of those goals that overtly appear most consistently across major liberal manifestos (e.g., the Oxford Manifesto of 1947). It is not an attempt to catalogue the idiosyncratic views of particular persons, parties, or countries, nor is it an attempt to investigate any covert goals, since both are beyond the scope of this article.

Radicalism

In various countries in Europe and Latin-America, in the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, a radical tendency arose next to or as a successor to traditional liberalism. In the United Kingdom the Radicals united with traditionally liberal Whigs to form the Liberal Party. In other countries, including Switzerland, Germany, Bulgaria, Denmark, Spain and the Netherlands, these left-wing liberals formed their own radical parties with various names. Similar events occurred in Argentina and Chile. In French political literature it is normal to make clear separation between liberalism and radicalism. In Serbia liberalism and radicalism have and have had almost nothing in common. But even the French radicals were aligned to the international liberal movement in the first half of the twentieth century, in the Entente Internationale des Partis Radicaux et des Partis Démocratiques similaires

Conservative liberalism

Examples include the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy in the Netherlands, the Moderate Party (Sweden), the Liberal Party of Denmark and, in some ways, the Free Democratic Party of Germany.

Liberal conservatism

Liberal conservatism is a widespread liberal movement. Examples include the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, Conservative Party of Canada, the Liberal Front Party (Brazil),Forza Italia, Civic Platform (Poland), and the Liberal Party of Australia.

International relations theory

"Liberalism" in international relations is a theory that holds that state preferences, rather than state capabilities, are the primary determinant of state behavior. Unlike realism where the state is seen as a unitary actor, liberalism allows for plurality in state actions. Thus, preferences will vary from state to state, depending on factors such as culture, economic system or government type. Liberalism also holds that interaction between states is not limited to the political/security ("high politics"), but also economic/cultural ("low politics") whether through commercial firms, organizations or individuals. Thus, instead of an anarchic international system, there are plenty of opportunities for cooperation and broader notions of power, such as cultural capital (for example, the influence of a country's films leading to the popularity of its culture and the creation of a market for its exports worldwide). Another assumption is that absolute gains can be made through co-operation and interdependence – thus peace can be achieved.

Liberalism as an international relations theory is not inherently linked to liberalism as a more general domestic political ideology. Increasingly, modern liberals are integrating critical international relations theory into their foreign policy positions.

Neoliberalism

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Originally coined 1938 at the Colloque Walter Lippmann by the German sociologist and economist Alexander Rüstow, "neoliberalism" is a label referring to the recent reemergence of classical liberalism among political and economic scholars and policy-makers. The label is usually used by people who oppose liberalism; proponents usually describe themselves simply as "liberals".

The emerged liberalism—like classical liberalism—supports free markets, free trade, and decentralized decision-making. Despite favoring less regulation and maximizing free trade, neoliberals differ on their support of domestic taxes, beliefs can range from anarcho-capitalist to social democrat in this field. Higher economic freedom has been found to correlate strongly with higher living standards, self-reported happiness, and peace. Since the 1970s, most of the world's countries have become more liberal. Between 1985 and 2005, only a small amount of surveyed countries did not increase their Economic Freedom of the World score.

Neoconservatism

Despite its name, Neoconservatism can be considered a liberal political philosophy that emerged in the United States of America, which supports actively using American economic and military power to bring liberalism, democracy, and human rights to other countries. Unlike traditional American conservatives, neoconservatives are generally comfortable with a minimally-bureaucratic welfare state; and, while generally supportive of free markets, they are willing to interfere for overriding social purposes. Neoconservative philosophy was originally born out of the aggressive idealism of former socialists and social liberals such as Irving Kristol. Since then, neoconservatism has arguably branched out into various forms.

Social democracy

The basic ideological difference between liberalism and social democracy lies in the role of the State in relation to the individual. Liberals value liberty, rights, freedoms, and private property as fundamental to individual happiness, and regard democracy as an instrument to maintain a society where each individual enjoys the greatest amount of liberty possible (subject to the Harm Principle). Hence, democracy and parliamentarianism are mere political systems which legitimize themselves only through the amount of liberty they promote, and are not valued per se. While the state does have an important role in ensuring positive liberty, liberals tend to trust that individuals are usually capable in deciding their own affairs, and generally do not need deliberate steering towards happiness.

Social democracy, on the other hand, has its roots in socialism (especially in democratic socialism), and typically favours a more community-based view. While social democrats also value individual liberty, they do not believe that real liberty can be achieved for the majority without transforming the nature of the state itself. Having rejected the revolutionary approach of Marxism, and choosing to further their goals through the democratic process, social democrats nevertheless retain a strong skepticism for capitalism, which they believe needs to be regulated or managed for the greater good. This focus on the greater good may, potentially, make social democrats more ready to step in and steer society in a direction that is deemed to be more equitable.

In practice, however, the differences between the two may be harder to perceive. This is especially the case nowadays, as many social democratic parties have shifted towards the center and adopted Third Way politics.

Libertarianism

Libertarianism is a term adopted by a broad spectrum of political philosophies which advocate the maximization of individual liberty and the minimization or even abolition of the state. Libertarians embrace viewpoints across that spectrum, ranging from pro-property to anti-property, from minarchist to openly anarchist.

Notes

1. Colton and Palmer, p. 15. The Christian teaching spread at first among the poor, the people at the bottom of society, those whom Greek glories and Roman splendors had passed over or enslaved, and who had the least to delight in or to hope for in the existing world.
2. Tanner, p. xviii.
3. Tanner, p. xx.
4. Olson, p. 183.
5. Colton and Palmer, pp. 22–4.
6. Roberts, p. 476. To avoid trial before the German bishops presided over by Gregory (who was already on his way to Germany), Henry came in humiliation to Canossa, where he waited in the snow barefoot until Gregory would receive his penance in one of the most dramatic of all confrontations of lay and spiritual authority.
7. Roberts, p. 473. By 'the Church' as an earthly institution, Christians mean the whole body of the faithful, lay and cleric alike. In this sense the Church came to be the same thing as European society during the Middle Ages.
8. Tanner, p. 1.
9. Tanner, p. xix.
10. Peters, p. 47.
11. Colton and Palmer, pp. 47–8.
12. Johnson, p. 28. Dante was not just a mediaval man, he was a Renaissance man too. He was highly critical of the church, like many scholars who followed him.
13. Colton and Palmer, p. 75. They might wish to manage their own religious affairs as they did their other business, believing that the church hierarchy was too much embedded in a feudal, baronial, and monarchical system with which they had little in common.
14. Colton and Palmer, p. 171.
15. Delaney, p. 18.
16. Godwin et al., p. 12.
17. Copleston, pp. 39–41.
18. Locke, p. 170.
19. Forster, p. 219.
20. Zvesper, p. 93.
21. Copleston, p. 33.
22. ^ Kerber, p. 189.
23. Colton and Palmer, p. 291.
24. Colton and Palmer, p. 333.
25. Bernstein, p. 48.
26. Colton and Palmer, p. 320.
27. Roberts, p. 701.
28. Coker, p. 3.
29. Frey, Foreword.
30. Frey, Preface.
31. Ros, p. 11.
32. Hanson, p. 189.
33. Manent and Seigel, p. 80.
34. Colton and Palmer, pp. 428–9.
35. ^ Colton and Palmer, p. 428.
36. Lyons, p. 111.
37. Lyons, p. 94.
38. Lyons, pp. 98–102.
39. Lyons, p. 139.
40. Heywood, p. 47.
41. Heywood, pp. 47–8.
42. Heywood, p. 52.
43. Heywood, p. 53.
44. Colton and Palmer, p. 479.
45. ^ Colton and Palmer, p. 510.
46. Colton and Palmer, p. 509.
47. Colton and Palmer, pp. 546–7.
48. ^ Stacy, p. 698.
49. Handelsman, p. 10.
50. Cook, p. 31.
51. Heywood, p. 61.
52. Heywood, p. 59.
53. Mazower, p. 3.
54. Shlapentokh, pp. 220–8.
55. Shaw, pp. 2–3.
56. Colton and Palmer, p. 808.
57. Auerbach and Kotlikoff, p. 299.
58. Dobson, p. 264.
59. Steindl, p. 111.
60. Knoop, p. 151.
61. Rivlin, p. 53.
62. Heywood, pp. 218–26.
63. Heywood, p. 214.
64. ^ Perry et al., p. 759.
65. Colomer, p. 62.
66. Diamond, cover flap.
67. Browning et al., p. 61.
68. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals, Simon & Schuster, 2006, ISBN 9780743270755
69. Oxford Manifesto, 1947
70. Kenneth Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values, Second Edition, Yale Univesity Press, ISBN 9780300013641
71. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1974/press.html
72. Harry K. Girvetz, Kenneth Minogue, Terence Ball, and Richard Dagger, "Liberalism", Encyclopedia Britannica, http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Liberalism&action=edit&section=11
73. Liberal International > The International
74. David McCullough, John Adams, Simon & Schuster, 2008, ISBN 9781416575887
75. Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin, An American Life, Simon & Schuster, 2004, ISBN 9780743258074
76. L.T. Hobhouse: Liberalism, 1911.
77. Gustave de Molinari: The Private Production of Security, 1849.
78. Herbert Spencer: The Right to Ignore the State, 1851.
79. Wilhelm von Humboldt: The Limits of State Action, 1792.
80. Anthony Alblaster: The Rise and Decline of Western Liberalism, New York, Basil Blackwell, 1984, page 353
81. compare: Guide de Ruggeiro: The History of European Liberalism, Bacon press, 1954, page 379
82. See for example the Oxford Manifesto 1997 of the Liberal International.
83. See for example Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in 1962: Liberalism in the American usage has little in common with the word as used in the politics of any European country, save possibly Britain in Liberalism in America: A Note for Europeans from The Politics of Hope, Riverside Press, Boston. See for a similar view Jamie F. Metzl: In the same "Liberalism" as the term is used in America today is not used in the "older, European sense, but has come to mean something quite different, namely policies upholding the modern welfare state in The Rise of Illiberal Democracy by Fareed Zakaria, Foreign Affairs, November/December, 1997, Vol 76, No. 6
84. "The International - Liberalism". Liberal International. Retrieved 2009-04-26.
85. "The Liberal Agenda for the 21st Century". Liberal International. Retrieved 2009-09-30.
86. See for more information the Liberale und radikale Parteien in Klaus von Beyme: Parteien in westlichen Demokratien, München, 1982
87. Compare page 255 and further in the Guide to the Political Parties of South America (Pelican Books, 1973
88. See page 1 and further of A sense of liberty, by Julie Smith, published by the Liberal International in 1997.
89. Oliver Marc Hartwich: Neoliberalism: The Genesis of a Political Swearword
90. ^ Economic Freedom of the World 2005, Fraser Institute
91. Polity, 2008 Robinson, Paul. Dictionary of International Security. Polity, 2008. p. 135
92. Fiala, Andrew. The Just War Myth. Rowman & Littlefield. 2008. p. 133
93. Vaughn, Stephen L. Encylcopedia of American Journalism. CRC Press, 2007 p. 329
94. Tanner, Michael. Leviathan on the Right. Cato Institute, 2007. pp 33-34.
95. See, for example, "The overlap between social democracy and social liberalism".
96. ^ Peter Vallentine, Libertarianism, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, July 24, 2006 version.
97. "libertarian", [[Merriam-Webster Dictionary]], Merriam-Webster {{citation}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
98. Professor Brian Martin, Eliminating state crime by abolishing the state; Murray Rothbard, Do You Hate the State?, The Libertarian Forum, Vol. 10, No. 7, July 1977;Libertarian Does Not Equal Libertine;What Libertarianism Isn't;A Libertarian Cheat Sheet by Wilton D. Alston;Myth and Truth About Libertarianism Murrary Rothbard;Do You Consider Yourself a Libertarian?
99. Sciabarra, Chris Mathew. Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism. Penn State Press, 2000, p. 193
100. Zwolinski, Matt, "Libertarianism", [[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]], retrieved 2008-08-09 {{citation}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
101. Woodcock, George,Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements, Broadview Press, 2004.
102. Hans-Hermann Hoppe's An Annotated Bibliography presents a long list of individuals who use both terms.

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• Zvesper, John. Nature and liberty. New York: Routledge, 1993. ISBN 0-415-08923-9

• Misplaced Pages neutral point of view disputes from July 2009
• Liberalism