What Kind of Liberalism Is This Book After?

Providing a theoretical and methodological introduction, the first chapter discusses the concept of liberalism and the ways in which it is employed in the book. First, it delineates three basic conceptualizations of liberalism: that of a political philosophical canon, that of an ideological family and that of a political movement (party). Then, it puts forward a combined approach, which—equally accounting for the last two of the mentioned perspectives—integrates approaches of political history with those of conceptual history and historical study of ideologies. The central subjects are political parties—yet the way in which they are being approached also includes the perspective of ideas. Analysis of their political act thus proceeds from the point of view of the concept of liberalism as “that semantic field in which the political understandings of people who regard themselves as liberals, or whom others regard as liberals, may be investigated” (Freeden). Ultimately, the concept “national liberal heirs” as the book’s core analytical category is shortly presented, designating a specific political party type, distinctive for the first half of the twentieth-century Central Europe. Its main advantage is that it enables the possibility to analyze and compare parties of this type from the point of view of liberalism without attributing them a priori commitment to any kind of liberal ideology.