Liberal Party (Arkiasis)

Liberal Party
Liberal Party Logo
Leader	Charles Hansen
Founded	18 September, 1893 (as Liberal Republican Party)
Headquarters	961 Superior St, 01BEF395 Leighton
Student wing	Liberal Students
Youth wing	Young Liberals
Membership (2014)	191,026
Ideology	Liberalism Third Way Internal Factions  • Social liberalism  • Classical liberalism
Political position	Centre
International affiliation	Liberal International Union of Esquarian Liberals and Democrats
Esquarian Parliament	Progressives
Colours	Orange
House of Representatives	65 / 650
Senate	38 / 200
Provincial Councils	108 / 1,828
Esquarian Parliament	1 / 42
Election symbol
Lib

The Liberal Party is a centrist Liberal political party in Arkiasis. It was founded on 18 September, 1893 as the "Liberal Republican Party" as a party advocating Liberalism and Republicanism during the Arkiasis Civil War. Later, in 1931 the party dropped "Republican" from its title and became just the "Liberal Party".

Current Platform

The Liberal Party supports the pursuit of greater egalitarianism in society through action to increase the distribution of skills, capacities, and productive endowments, while rejecting income redistribution as the means to achieve this. It emphasizes commitment to: balanced budgets, providing equal opportunity combined with an emphasis on personal responsibility, decentralization of government power, encouragement of public-private partnerships, improving labour supply, investment in human development, protection of social capital, and protection of the environment.

Political Impact and History

The Liberal Party has had a profound influence in Arkiasian history and is credited with shaping Arkiasis society for the first quarter of the 20th century and has commonly been refereed to one of the two "naturally" governing parties of Arkiasis along with the Labour Party.

The party has underwent several major changes to policy throughout its history. For the first quarter of the 20th century, the Party was considered Classical Liberal and supported limited government. Following the Great Depression, the party underwent a massive shift and began to support the Social Democratic reforms and turned away from supporting a lassiez-faire economy in favour of the social market economy.

The 1982 Federal Election saw a major landslide victory for the Liberal Party who subsequently ushered in a series of neoliberal reforms which saw large scale privatization, economic austerity and a reduction of taxes. However, the reforms proved to be massively unpopular and the party gradually lost support throughout the 80's and 90's. By 1998 the Liberals lost 18% of its support.

The Liberal Party again changed its policy in the late 2000's towards a third way approach and agreed to join into a coalition government with the Labour Party following the 2010 election. This move however proved to be massively unpopular with the right-leaning faction of the party whom accused the party of moving too far to the left which resulted in the party achieving its worst electoral performance in history in the 2014 election. Following the expulsion of the National Front from the governing coalition in 2015, the Liberals agreed to provide confidence and supply for the ruling government. The Liberals have been accused by others as being opportunists who are becoming exceedingly desperate for any relevance as support drops for the party.

House of Representatives

Election	Seats	+/–	Government
2014	65 / 650	36	crossbench
2010	101 / 650	2	in government
2006	99 / 615	8	in opposition
2002	91 / 615	13	in opposition
1998	104 / 580	24	in opposition
1994	128 / 580	31	in opposition
1990	159 / 580	12	in government
1986	171 / 545	25	in government
1982	196 / 545	27	in government
1978	159 / 510	13	in government
1974	146 / 510	14	in opposition
1970	132 / 510	132	in opposition
1929	137 / 556	14	in government
1926	151 / 546	19	in government
1923	132 / 537	38	in government
1920	94 / 518	33	in government
1917	61 / 511	25	in opposition
1911	86 / 455	5	in opposition
1908	91 / 449	30	in opposition
1905	121 / 445	14	in government
1902	135 / 442	10	in government
1898	145 / 440	9	in government
1895	136 / 432	136	in government