Social Democrat Radical Party

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Partido Radical Socialdemócrata




Leader	José Antonio Gómez

Founded	December 27, 1863 (PR) August 18, 1994 (PRSD)
Headquarters	Miraflores 495 Santiago

Political ideology	Centrism, Social democracy, Social liberalism
International affiliation	Socialist International

Website	http://www.partidoradical.cl/

Chile
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The Social Democrat Radical Party (Partido Radical Socialdemócrata) is a social democratic party in Chile. The party is a member of Socialist International.

The Radical Party was founded as a progressive liberal party in 1863. In the twenthieth century the party was divided in liberal and social democratic tendencies. The political importance outweighed its electoral presence. The Radical Party owed its survival after the restoration of the democracy as a political force to the binomial electoral law inherited from the military government and the desire of the Christian Democrats to use the Radical Party as a foil against the left. It was to the Christian Democrats' advantage to provide relatively more space to the Radicals on the joint lists than to their stronger PPD partners. The Radicals succeeded in electing two senators and five deputies in 1989 and were allotted two out of twenty cabinet ministers, despite polls reporting that they had less than 2 % support nationally. It remained to be seen if, over the long run, the Radical Party could compete with Chile's other major parties, particularly the PPD, which had moved closest to the Radical Party's traditional position on the political spectrum. (Source for this paragraph: U.S. Library of Congress Country studies) The Social Democrat Radical Party was founded on 1994, when the Radical and Social Democrat Parties merged.

The party supported in the 1999/2000 presidential elections Ricardo Lagos Escobar, who won 48.0 % in the first round and was elected with 51.3 % in the second round. At the last legislative elections, 16 december 2001, the party won as part of the Coalition of Parties for Democracy 6 out of 120 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and no seats in the Senate. This changed at the 2005 elections to 7 and 1, respectively.