Conservative parties: such parties want to retain the status quo. They are skeptical of rapid innovation and changes, for instance, with regard to the perception and the role of the family, and alternative models of life (for example, the legal status of LGTBI citizens). While they are often strong supporters of traditional ideas, values and principles, they rarely assert that these cannot be continuously maintained without moderate reforms. Liberal parties: such parties espouse the rights of individual freedom and emphasize the democratic character of the constitution. Traditionally, they are secular and mostly committed to a free market economy.

Social democratic parties: such parties mostly emerged in close relation to the labor movement and their political programmes are based on social equality; they assign the state with a strong regulating role in the economy and society. Socialist parties: such parties also emerged in close contact to parts of the labor movement, but they represent a more radical approach to achieving social equality; a state-driven economy are central targets of many socialist parties.

Parties defined by religion are special forms of parties that are characterized by their social-political objectives. Worldwide, a vast number of parties are more or less strongly based on religious convictions. There are Christian or Christian democratic, Islamic and Hindu parties that establish their programmes on the values and standards of their religion or confession. This can lead to considerable differences in the political programmes and political objectives of such parties, depending on how individual parties consider their respective religion’s stand with regard to individual human rights and individual freedom or to political democracy.

Extreme right-wing parties: such parties preach nationalistic ideologies, which are often inter-mixed with a vague ethnic ideology and possibly racist perceptions.

Communist parties: such parties propagate the abolition of private ownership of the means of production and dictatorship of the proletariat and assume a predetermination of history.

Source: Political Parties: Functions and Organization in Democratic Societies