introduction

When the president of the European Parliament was elected in January 1987, the Liberal group voted for the left-wing Radical Marco Panella on the first ballot and for Sir Henry Plumb, a Conservative, on the second. The group claimed that ‘by shifting en bloc from Panella to Plumb’ [it] ‘thereby illustrated the deep unity which exists – in their diversity – between the European Liberals’. Others might consider that this behaviour illustrated the lack of political coherence amongst the European parties which claim to be liberal. Liberal parties thus confront us with a major problem of classification and of analysis. In simple terms, the problem arises because the Liberal family itself asserts that it exists; yet even the most superficial glance at the Liberal group in the European Parliament or at the Liberal International finds it to be a most heterogeneous collection, embracing elements that on close inspection strike the political scientist as being surprising candidates for inclusion. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that political scientists have, until now, tended to focus only on the major party families and have not yet given much attention to the smaller party families. The problem is, in fact, very complex and can be approached at several different levels.

At the intellectual level, attempting to identify liberal parties should produce important lessons for the study of parties and party systems.