Bourgeois party


"Bourgeois party" or "bourgeois camp" is a political term used in Europe, which can refer to a conservative or right-leaning liberal party, and is in contrast to the socialistic "left-wing camp". The term is mainly used when the main left-leaning forces are social democrats and socialists, and the main right-leaning forces against them are liberals and conservatives; it is rarely used when the main left-leaning forces include liberals. In the political landscape of the Germanic language region, traditional bourgeois parties are as follows:
Parties that adopted term in their name include:
In the German-speaking media, conservative and right-liberal as well as liberal-conservative parties abroad are often referred to as "bourgeois parties". In the mid-1980s, Heiner Geißler, then secretary-general of the CDU, introduced the camp theory to the West Germany. Within the newly formed four-party system, Geißler described the center-right parties CDU/CSU, and FDP as the bourgeois camp, and the SPD and Greens as the "left-wing camp". In Germany, the opposite expression of "left-wing camp" is preferred as "bourgeois party" rather than "right-wing camp" in order to exclude far-right politics from the mainstream right-leaning forces. The Alternative for Germany, a far-right political party founded in 2013, calls itself a "bourgeois ", which is criticized and generally unacceptable.