Party of Democratic Socialism (Germany)

Party of Democratic Socialism
Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus / Die Linkspartei.PDS
AbbreviationPDS
LeaderLothar Bisky
Founded
  • 16 December 1989 (SED-PDS)
  • 4 February 1990 (PDS)
  • 17 July 2005 (Die Linkspartei.PDS)
Dissolved16 June 2007
Preceded bySocialist Unity Party of Germany (SED)
Merged intoThe Left
HeadquartersKarl-Liebknecht-Haus Kleine Alexanderstraße 28 D-10178 Berlin
Ideology
Political positionLeft-wing[10]
European affiliationParty of the European Left
European Parliament groupEuropean United Left–Nordic Green Left
Colours  Red
Website
www.sozialisten.de

The Party of Democratic Socialism (German: Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus, PDS) was a left-wing populist political party in Germany active between 1989 and 2007.[11] It was the legal successor to the communist Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which ruled the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) as the sole governing party until 1990.[12] From 1990 through to 2005, the PDS had been seen as the left-wing "party of the East". While it achieved minimal support in western Germany, it regularly won 15% to 25% of the vote in the eastern new states of Germany, entering coalition governments with the Social Democratic Party of Germany in the federal states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin.[13]

In 2005, the PDS, renamed The Left Party.PDS (Die Linkspartei.PDS) entered an electoral alliance with the Western Germany-based Electoral Alternative for Labour and Social Justice (WASG) and won 8.7% of the vote in Germany's September 2005 federal elections (more than double the 4% share achieved by the PDS alone in the 2002 federal election). On 16 June 2007, the two groupings merged to form a new party called The Left (Die Linke).[14]

The party had many socially progressive policies, including support for legalisation of same-sex marriage and greater social welfare for immigrants.[15]

Internationally, the Left Party.PDS was a co-founder of the Party of the European Left and was the largest party in the European United Left–Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group in the European Parliament.[14]

  1. ^ König, Thomas; Finke, Daniel (March 2015). "Legislative Governance in Times of International Terrorism". The Journal of Conflict Resolution. 59 (2): 262–282. doi:10.1177/0022002713503298.
  2. ^ Oswald, Franz (12 November 2007). "The party of democratic socialism: Ex-communists entrenched as East German regional protest party". Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics. 12 (2): 173-195. doi:10.1080/13523279608415308.
  3. ^ Yoder, Jennifer (1999). From East Germans to Germans?: The New Postcommunist Elites. Duke University Press. p. 188. ISBN 9780822323723.
  4. ^ [1][2][3]
  5. ^ Klingelhöfer, Tristan; Richter, Simon; Loew, Nicole (2024). "Changing affective alignments between parties and voters". West European Politics: 1–28. doi:10.1080/01402382.2023.2295735.
  6. ^ Engel, Ulf (2002). Germany's Africa Policy Revisited: Interests, Images and Incrementalism. LIT Verlag Munster. p. 22. ISBN 9783825859855.
  7. ^ [5][6]
  8. ^ Saalfeld, Thomas (2002). "The German Party System: Continuity and Change". German Politics. 11 (3): 99–130. doi:10.1080/714001303.
  9. ^ Dunphy, Richard (2004). Contesting Capitalism?: Left Parties and European Integration. Manchester University Press. p. 168. ISBN 9780719068041.
  10. ^ [8][9]
  11. ^ Peter Barker (ed.) The Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany: Modern Post-communism Or Nostalgic Populism?, 1998
  12. ^ Eric D. Weitz, Creating German Communism, 1890-1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997
  13. ^ Eric Canepa, Germany's Party of Democratic Socialism, Socialist Register, Vol. 30, 1994
  14. ^ a b Dominic Heilig, Mapping the European Left: Socialist Parties in the EU Archived 2019-06-11 at the Wayback Machine, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, April 2016
  15. ^ David F. Patton. Out of the East: From PDS to Left Party in Unified Germany (State University of New York Press; 2011)