The Demarcian National Party: A Political Party Overview and Analysis

The Demarcian National Party is the oldest party in Demarcian politics. Founded in April 2017, it was historically the dominant party in Demarcia, the traditional "party of government", until it was ousted in February 2020 by a resurgent Social Democratic Party, ending nearly three years of DNP dominance over the country.

The Demarcian National Party was co-established under the name Waffle Party by SuperMiron and Snowstormer, two out of the three founding fathers of Demarcia (the remaining one was Penstubal, who founded the Pancake Party, the modern-day Social Democratic Party).

The Demarcian National Party did not have a real ideology until early 2020. Its political views as a party were defined only by one, relatively vague sentence in its party Statute that declares the party's purpose to be "[providing] stable governance for the Republic of Demarcia with respect for basic human rights and civil liberties". In that sense, the Demarcian National Party could be described as a big tent national political party that bases itself on the most basic of liberal democratic principles.

The Demarcian National Party was always the least ideological of the three major parties of Demarcia today. Its ideology was historically unclear and only recently became more specific, but the party itself is still not entirely sure what it is; until recently, it was considered a social liberal party and had come closer to the Social Democratic Party on many issues. However, since the beginning of the Vincent_Wolff leadership in May 2021, the party has taken a firmly conservative stance on numerous issues and has sought to rollback many of the Social Democrats' achievements.

However, while the party now professes a conservative ideology under the Vincent_Wolff leadership, the sentence mentioned earlier, which is still in the party's statute, remains probably the most important influence on the party today in terms of its ideological orientation. Indeed, the party hasn't completely abandoned liberalism, and the party under Vincent_Wolff considers itself to be "liberal conservative".

This liberal conservatism is visible in the policies as well. In stark contrast to her pro-family, pro-community, pro-traditional values rhetoric, the August 2021 Demarcian National Party manifesto focused overwhelmingly on cutting down state bureaucracy and reducing the size of the government. This suggests that the Demarcian National Party wants to maintain a link with right-libertarians and classical liberals.

The philosophy of the Demarcian National Party is very different from that of the Social Democratic Party and the Green Party. The latter two are quite close to each other, even though they hail from two different ideological families - the socialist and the green ones - but the Demarcian National Party is hard to characterize in terms of ideological families. It would be more accurate to say, however, that the very roots of the party are closer to the liberal ideological family rather than the conservative one, but also that the party has evolved to embody a hybrid of liberal-conservative ideological influences - its roots contain elements of both.

How do the Demarcian National Party's ideology and roots relate to those of similar parties in real life? What are those similar parties?

As had just been stated, the party's roots are more accurately described as closer to the liberal ideological family than the conservative ideological family. In that sense, the party might feel more at home with parties such as the German Free Democrats, the Swedish Liberals, the British Liberal Democrats and others.

However, unlike those three parties, the Demarcian National Party has a slight conservative emphasis and a liberal-conservative leaning. There is one notable party in the world that is very similar to the Demarcian National Party in both its ideological roots and evolution - and that's the Liberal Party of Australia. The Liberal Party of Australia's origins lie firmly in the liberal ideological family, but the party's ideology evolved and shifted to include conservative views as the Australian Labor Party (the Australian equivalent to the Demarcian Social Democratic Party) started to rise.

Today, the Liberal Party of Australia has a quite complicated ideology. It is more aptly described as a conservative party rather than a liberal party, and its ideology is liberal-conservative just like the Demarcian National Party. The Liberal Party of Australia contains numerous factions which are socially conservative, but broadly the party appears to take a cautious towards social and cultural change, but not an outright conservative one. Indeed, large segments of that party are socially liberal, and the party takes a balancing act between the socially liberal and socially conservative factions. However, economically, the party is a staunch advocate of the free markets. The Demarcian National Party appears to be firmly aligned with them on that issue at the moment.

Another party the Demarcian National Party is similar to in those ways is the New Zealand National Party, founded as a combination of liberal and conservative parties in response to the rise of the New Zealand Labour Party. It too takes a strongly liberal stances on the economic issues, while on social issues it's quite ambiguous and attempts a balancing act between social liberalism and social conservatism, but generally can't be described as particularly socially conservative.

It must be noted that the Demarcian National Party does have similarities with European centre-right, christian democratic parties, and Vincent_Wolff herself is thought to be sympathetic to christian democracy. However, christian democratic parties have much stronger socially conservative factions as it appears than the aforementioned two centre-right parties in Australia and New Zealand do. Additionally, they favour a greater deal of state intervention in the economy; perhaps, on that front, the Demarcian National Party was much more in line with them a few months ago, before Vincent_Wolff took power in the party, than now.

This is about it that there is to be said about the Demarcian National Party's political ideology and philosophy. It is a party that has its roots closer to the liberal family, but has evolved to combine elements of both the liberal and conservative families. It remains to be seen where the party will be in the future, in particular after Vincent_Wolff's leadership; whether it will move further to the right and fully entrench itself in the conservative camp, or whether it will move leftwards again.

Demarcian Inquirer Team