Socialist International


The Socialist International is a political international consisting mostly of social democratic political parties and labour organisations. The SI was founded in support of democratic socialism, albeit it has generally moderated over time.
Although formed in 1951 as a successor to the Labour and Socialist International, it has antecedents in the late 19th century. The organisation currently includes 132 member parties and organisations from over 100 countries. Its members have governed in many countries, including most of Europe. In 2013, a schism in the SI led to the establishment of the Progressive Alliance.
The current president is the prime minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, elected at the last SI Congress held in Madrid, Spain, in November 2022.
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History

First and Second Internationals (1864–1916)

The International Workingmen's Association, also known as the First International, was the first international body to bring together organisations representing the working class. It was formed in London on 28 September 1864 by socialist, communist and anarchist political groups and trade unions. Tensions between moderates and revolutionaries led to its dissolution in 1876 in Philadelphia.
The Second International was formed in Paris on 14 July 1889 as an association of the socialist parties.

Labour and Socialist International (1919–1940)

The International Socialist Commission, also known as the Berne International, was formed in February 1919 at a meeting in Bern by parties that wanted to resurrect the Second International. In March 1919, Communist parties formed the Communist International, the Third International, at a meeting in Moscow.
Some parties did not want to be a part of the resurrected Second International or Comintern. They formed the International Working Union of Socialist Parties on 27 February 1921 at a conference in Vienna. The ISC and the IWUSP joined to form the Labour and Socialist International in May 1923 at a meeting in Hamburg.

Socialist International (1951–present)

The Socialist International was formed in Frankfurt in July 1951 as a successor to the LSI.
During the post-World War II period, the SI aided social democratic parties in re-establishing themselves when dictatorship gave way to democracy in Portugal (1974) and Spain (1975). Until its 1976 Geneva Congress, the SI had few members outside Europe and no formal involvement with Latin America. In the 1980s, most SI parties gave their backing to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, whose democratically elected left-wing government was subject to a campaign to overthrow it backed by the United States, which culminated in the Iran–Contra affair after the Reagan administration covertly continued US support for the Contras after such support was banned by Congress.
In the late 1970s and in the 1980s the SI had extensive contacts and discussion with the two leading powers of the Cold War period, the United States and the Soviet Union, on issues concerning East–West relations and arms control. The SI supported détente and disarmament agreements, such as SALT II, START and INF. They had several meetings and discussion in Washington, D.C., with President Jimmy Carter and [Vice President of the United States|President of the United States|Vice President] George H. W. Bush and in Moscow with Secretaries General Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev. The SI's delegations to these discussions were led by the Finnish Prime Minister Kalevi Sorsa.
By the 1980s, the SI had become more favourable to a social democratic or social market economy, rather than a socialist economy, arguing "a 'social market economy' needs to be developed, where economic development and a truly competitive market can be established ." In its platform, it states: "markets can and must function as a dynamic way of promoting innovation and signalling the desires of consumers ."
Following the Tunisian Revolution, the Constitutional Democratic Rally was expelled from the SI in January 2011; later that month the Egyptian National Democratic Party was also expelled; and as a result of the 2010–2011 Ivorian crisis, the Ivorian Popular Front was expelled in March 2011, in accordance with section 7.1 of the statutes of the Socialist International. These decisions were approved at the subsequent SI Congress in Cape Town in 2012 in line with section 5.1.3 of the statutes.

Progressive Alliance split (2013)

On 22 May 2013 the Social Democratic Party of Germany along with some other current and former member parties of the SI founded a rival international network of social-democratic parties known as the Progressive Alliance, citing the perceived undemocratic and outmoded nature of the SI, as well as the Socialist International's admittance and continuing inclusion of undemocratic political movements into the organization. For example, the SPD objected to the continued presence of the Sandinista National Liberation Front and the delayed ouster of the Tunisian Democratic Constitutional Rally and Egyptian National Democratic Party.

Relationship with Latin America

For a long time, the Socialist International remained distant from Latin America, considering the region as a zone of influence of the United States. For example, it did not denounce the coup d'état against Socialist President Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954 or the invasion of the Dominican Republic by the United States in 1965. It was not until the 1973 Chilean coup d'état that "a world we did not know" was discovered, explained Antoine Blanca, a diplomat for the French Socialist Party. According to him, solidarity with the Chilean left was "the first challenge worthy of the name, against Washington, of an International which, until then, had done everything to appear subject to American strategy and NATO". Subsequently, notably under the leadership of François Mitterrand, the SI supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and other movements in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras in their struggle against US-supported dictatorships.
In the 1990s, it was joined by non-socialist parties that took note of the economic power of the European countries governed or to be governed by their partners across the Atlantic and calculated the benefits they could derive from it. During this period, "the Socialist International works in a clientist way; some parties come here to rub shoulders with Europeans as if they were in the upper class," says Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, one of the representatives of the Party of the Democratic Revolution at the SI. It is home to "the very centrist Argentinean Radical Civic Union ; the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party, which was not very democratically in power for seventy years; the Colombian Liberal Party—under whose governments the left-wing formation Patriotic Union was exterminated—introduced the neoliberal model and to which, until 2002, Álvaro Uribe will belong". In the following decade, many left-wing parties that came to power preferred to keep their distance from the SI.

Left splits

As other left-wing parties distanced themselves from the SI, the Socialist Party of Uruguay and the Democratic Socialists of America left the international in 2017 due to members having adopted policies favoring austerity, privatization, deregulation, and capitalism, and rejecting socialism. The former was a founding member of the Progressive Alliance in 2013, and the latter joined the anti-capitalist Progressive International in 2023.

Logo

The logo is the fist and rose, based on the 1977 design by José María Cruz Novillo for the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, itself a variant of the logo drawn by Marc Bonnet for the French Socialist Party in 1969. Variants of the emblem are or were used by several SI member parties.

Presidents, honorary presidents and secretaries general

Presidents

  • , there have been a total of 9 Socialist International presidents.

Honorary presidents

Honorary presidents include:

Secretaries general

General Coordinator

In February 2024, the SI Council meeting in Madrid established the role of General Coordinator, effectively putting the office of Secretary General on hold:
  • Chantal Kambiwa, Cameroon

Summits

Members

Full members

There are 93 full members:

Consultative parties

There are 17 consultative parties:

Observer parties

There are 11 observer parties:

Former members

CountryNameAbbrNotes
Social Democratic Party of AlbaniaPSDAdmitted as consultative member in 1992. Promoted to full member in 1996. Demoted to observer member in 2012 due to non-payment of membership fees. Delisted in December 2014.
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Fraternal organisations

The Socialist International maintains close ties with three fraternal organizations:

Associated organisations

In addition to its member parties and fraternal organisations, the Socialist International collaborates with a number of associated organisations from across the world: