Christian democracy

Peak influence 1945–1990

Core claim

Human dignity is prior to both the market and the state, and society is properly organised through families, parishes, unions and firms — with government acting only where those cannot.

What it wants the state to do

Wants a social market economy: private ownership, strong labour representation, universal insurance, and a legal order shaped by subsidiarity, which pushes every decision to the smallest competent body. Wants the state to support the family rather than substitute for it.

Historical success case

West Germany's postwar settlement — codetermination, sectoral bargaining and the social market economy — which rebuilt an industrial democracy out of a destroyed dictatorship within two decades.

Historical failure mode

The long single-party dominance of Italian Christian democracy, which ended in the Tangentopoli corruption investigations of the early 1990s: a governing party without a plausible alternative decayed into a patronage machine.

Nearby traditions

Social democracy, with which it built most European welfare states in negotiation; Burkean conservatism, sharing the anti-abstraction instinct without the confessional social doctrine.

Common mix-up

Not theocracy, and its own theorists insist on the distinction. It accepts religious pluralism, competitive elections and the loss of power; integralism accepts none of the three. It also founded the institutions that became the European Union, which makes it a poor fit for any story where religiosity implies nationalism.

Coordinates