Liberal Democracy (France)
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Liberal Democracy (Démocratie Libérale, DL) was a French political party that advocated laissez-faire economics and whose leader was Alain Madelin.
The partys that would eventually become Démocratie Libérale was created in 1966 by finance minister Valéry Giscard d'Estaing as the National Federation of Republicans and Independents, a conservative, but independent, group which supported President Charles de Gaulle.
After Giscard became president in 1974, the party changed its name to the Republican Party (Parti Républicain), and in 1978 became one of the constituent parts of the Union for French Democracy (UDF), Giscard's new political coalition party.
In 1997, Alain Madelin took over leadership of the party, and led it in the direction of neoliberal economics. He changed the name of the party to Démocratie Liberale (Liberal Democracy), and in 1998 broke with the UDF, in part over the question of cooperation with the far-right National Front in local government, which Madelin supported but other groups within the UDF opposed.
On September 21, 2002, the DL merged with the Rassemblement pour la République to form the Union pour la Majorité Présidentielle.