FREE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

German Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP) German centrist political party that advocates individualism and free economic competition. Although it has a relatively small following, it has made and broken governments by forming coalitions with larger parties. Delegates from liberal parties in the American, British, and French zones of occupation formed the FDP in December 1948. In the West Germany of the early 1950s the FDP took part in the coalition government of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). It left the coalition in 1956 to join with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as an opposition party. After the national elections in 1961, when the CDU and its coalition partner, the Christian Social Union (CSU), lost their absolute majority, the FDP exacted the promise of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's resignation as the price of its cooperation in a new coalition. The FDP's disillusionment with the policies of the new chancellor, Ludwig Erhard, appears to have been the main motive for the party's second withdrawal from its coalition with the Christian Democrats in November 1966. After national elections in 1969, the FDP joined forces with the SPD to overcome the CDUCSU plurality in the national assembly and elect the SPD leader Willy Brandt chancellor. The FDP remained in coalition with the SPD until 1982, when it formed a coalition government with the Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union. After the 1983 and 1987 parliamentary elections, the FDP remained part of a governing coalition with the CDU and the CSU.