This article is about the modern alliance of social democratic political parties. For the historic alliance of left-wing and socialist parties, see Second International.
Political international
Socialist International
Socialist International logo
Light red: Countries with a political party affiliated with the Socialist International Dark red: Countries with the ruling party affiliated with the Socialist International
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[3] 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.[4]
The International Workingmen's Association, also known as the First International, was the first international body to bring together organisations representing the working class.[6] It was formed in London on 28 September 1864 by socialist, communist and anarchist political groups and trade unions.[7] Tensions between moderates and revolutionaries led to its dissolution in 1876 in Philadelphia.[8]
The Second International was formed in Paris on 14 July 1889 as an association of the socialist parties.[9] Differences over World War I led to the Second International being dissolved in 1916.
Some parties did not want to be a part of the resurrected Second International (ISC) or Comintern. They formed the International Working Union of Socialist Parties (IWUSP, also known as Vienna International, Vienna Union, or Two-and-a-Half International) on 27 February 1921 at a conference in Vienna.[12] The ISC and the IWUSP joined to form the Labour and Socialist International (LSI) in May 1923 at a meeting in Hamburg.[13] The rise of Nazism and the start of World War II led to the dissolution of the LSI in 1940.
Socialist International (1951–present)
The Socialist International was formed in Frankfurt in July 1951 as a successor to the LSI.[14]
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.[15] In the 1980s, most SI parties gave their backing to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas (FSLN), 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.
Willy Brandt with outgoing secretary general Bernt Carlsson (left) and new secretary general Pentti Väänänen (right) at the Socialist International Congress in 1983
Since then, the SI has admitted as members an increasing number of parties and organisations from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America (see below for current list).
Following the Tunisian Revolution, the Constitutional Democratic Rally was expelled from the SI in January 2011;[17] later that month the EgyptianNational Democratic Party was also expelled;[18] and as a result of the 2010–2011 Ivorian crisis, the Ivorian Popular Front was expelled in March 2011,[19] 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.[20] These were long term ruling parties of one-party states that were overthrown in the protests of the Arab Spring.
After the 2012 Congress, the SI underwent major changes as many of the large European parties allowed their membership to lapse – for example the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Swedish Social Democratic Party– or downgraded their membership to observer status – for example, the British Labour Party and the Norwegian Labour Party (DNA). These parties now concentrate their international links on the Progressive Alliance, with the SI's focus now increasingly being on the global south.
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.[27]
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.[citation needed] 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 (Mexico) at the SI. It is home to "the very centrist Argentinean Radical Civic Union (UCR); the Mexican Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which was not very democratically in power for seventy years; the Colombian Liberal Party—under whose governments the left-wing formation Patriotic Union (1986–1990) was exterminated—introduced the neoliberal model (1990–1994) and to which, until 2002, Álvaro Uribe will belong". In the following decade, many left-wing parties that came to power (in Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and El Salvador) preferred to keep their distance from the SI.[27]
Admitted (as Armenian Socialist Party) as observer member in 1996.[41][47] Promoted (as ASP) to consultative member in 1999.[35] Promoted (as ASP) to full member in 2003.[36]
Admitted as observer member in 1999.[35] Promoted to consultative member in 2003.[36] Promoted to full member in November 2015.[48] Officially deregistered in Belarus since 2005.
Admitted as consultative member in 1996.[41] Promoted to full member in 1999.[35][92] Promoted to full member in 2008.[59] Status unclear following the 2020 Malian coup d'état.
Admitted as consultative member in 1992.[40] Demoted to observer member in 2012 due to non-payment of membership fees.[30] Delisted in December 2014. Reinstated in 2019.
Admitted as consultative member in 1996.[41] Promoted to full member in 1999.[35]PSDR admitted as consultative member in 1992, full member in 2001.[117] Admitted as full member in 2003.[36] Both parties merged into PSD in 2001.
Admitted as consultative member in 1999.[35] Promoted to full member in 2003.[36][128]Party does not individually stand in elections but participates as part of the Broad Front.
Admitted as consultative member in 1992.[40] Promoted to full member in 1996.[41][144] Demoted to observer member in 2012 due to non-payment of membership fees.[30] Delisted in December 2014.
Admitted as observer member in 1996.[41] Promoted to consultative member in 2003.[36] Readmitted as consultative member in June/July 2014.[60] Admitted as full member in 2016.[56] Party dissolved in 2023.[147]
Admitted as observer member in 1996.[41] Promoted to full member in 2003.[36][175] Demoted to observer member in 2012 due to non-payment of membership fees.[30] Delisted in December 2014.
Admitted as observer member in 2008.[59] Promoted to consultative member in 2010. Promoted to full member in 2012.[87][192] Expelled in March 2022 for its support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[193]
Admitted as consultative member in 2003.[36] Promoted to full member in 2008.[59] Demoted to observer member in 2012 due to non-payment of membership fees.[30] Ceased to exist in 2009[194]
Resigned in 1976 in response to the Dutch Labour Party's charges of violations of human rights and detention of political prisoners without trial,[195] and DLP and the British Labour Party's charges of media censorship.[196][197]
Admitted (as United List of Social Democrats) as full member in 1996.[41][198] Demoted to observer member in 2012 due to non-payment of membership fees.[30] Delisted in December 2014.
Member since 1976,[203] merged with the New American Movement in 1982 to form the Democratic Socialists of America, which remained a member until 2011.[202]
↑ Nathan Gilbert Quimpo (2020). "The Post-war Rise and Decline of the Left". In Toby Carroll; Shahar Hameiri; Lee Jones (eds.). The Political Economy of Southeast Asia: Politics and Uneven Development Under Hyperglobalisation. Springer Nature. p.150. ISBN978-3-03-028255-4.
1 2 Les enfants cachés du Général Pinochet. Précis de Coups d'État Modernes et autres tentatives de déstabilisation. Éditions Don Quichotte. 2015. pp.613–614.
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