Back قائمة الدول الاشتراكية Arabic Списък на социалистически държави Bulgarian Llista d'estats socialistes Catalan Seznam socialistických států Czech Liste sozialistischer Staaten German Luettelo sosialistisista valtioista Finnish A szocialista államok listája Hungarian 社会主義国一覧 Japanese 사회주의 국가 목록 Korean Список на социјалистички земји Macedonian
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Several past and present states have declared themselves socialist states or in the process of building socialism. The majority of self-declared socialist countries have been Marxist–Leninist or inspired by it, following the model of the Soviet Union or some form of people's or national democracy. They share a common definition of socialism, and they refer to themselves as socialist states on the road to communism with a leading vanguard party structure, hence they are often called communist states. Meanwhile, the countries in the non-Marxist–Leninist category represent a wide variety of different interpretations of the term socialism, and in many cases the countries do not define what they mean by it. Modern uses of the term socialism are wide in meaning and interpretation.
Because a sovereign state is a different entity from the political party that governs that state at any given time, a country may be ruled by a socialist party without the country itself claiming to be socialist or the socialist party being written into the constitution. This has occurred in both one-party and multi-party political systems. In particular, there are numerous cases of social democratic and democratic socialist parties winning elections in liberal democratic states and ruling for a number of terms until a different party wins the elections. While socialist parties have won many elections around the world and most elections in the Nordic countries, none of those countries have adopted socialism as a state ideology or written the party into the constitution.
Several countries with liberal democratic constitutions mention socialism. India is a democracy that has been governed by non-socialist parties on many occasions, but its constitution makes references to socialism. Certain other countries, such as Hungary,[1] Myanmar,[2] and Poland[3] have constitutions that make references to their communist and socialist past by recognizing or condemning it, but without claiming to be socialist in the present.
- ^ Tschentscher, Axel. "Hungary Index". Servat.unibe.ch. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
- ^ "Myanmar 2008". Constitute Project. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
- ^ Tschentscher, Axel. "Poland – Constitution". Servat.unibe.ch. Retrieved 27 December 2019.