Back Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus ALS حزب الاشتراكية الديمقراطية (ألمانيا) Arabic حزب الاشتراكيه الديموقراطيه ARZ Die Linkspartei Catalan Die Linkspartei.PDS Czech Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus Danish Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus German Κόμμα Δημοκρατικού Σοσιαλισμού (Γερμανία) Greek Partido del Socialismo Democrático Spanish Demokraatliku Sotsialismi Partei Estonian

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)

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