Conservative-Democratic Party

The Conservative-Democratic Party (, PCD) was a political party in Romania. Over the years, it had the following names: the Democratic Party, the Nationalist Conservative Party, or the Unionist Conservative Party. The Conservative-Democratic Party was established on November 21, 1908, by the separation of a wing from the Conservative Party led by Take Ionescu, having the goal of creating the third ruling party, meant to interrupt the cycle of "governmental rotation" between conservatives and liberals. The electoral base of the party was made up of representatives of the small bourgeoisie (traders, small and medium-sized real estate and movable property owners, industrialists, wealthy peasants, etc.) and liberal professions (lawyers, teachers and doctors. Another important party's supporters led by Take Ionescu was the state officials and the "urban intellectual proletariat" – high school graduates who could not be absorbed by an insufficiently developed labor market. The core of the new party's political program was, as its only president, Take Ionescu, said, "putting conservative ideas on the democratic ground of the country." In practice, this political vision materialized in the adoption of contextual solutions, oscillating between conservative and liberal ideas. The party's political program, adopted at the congress held in 1908, was revised several times: in 1910, and then, in 1913 when the Liberals' proposal to revise the constitution was accepted, including the expropriation and extension of the right to vote, and in 1919 when it was adapted to the new post-war political realities. The party was indissolubly linked to its leader Take Ionescu, who led it throughout his life. First, the party progressed very fast, when it succeeded to win the vast majority of the partial elections held between 1908 and 1910, ahead of the detached Conservative Party from which it split. However, King Carol I refused to recognize this new political reality and abandon the system of liberal-conservative alternative at the government, and thus, never entrusted the task of forming the government to the Conservative-Democratic Party.