NOTE: Although the following article has not been revised for this edition of the Encyclopedia, the substantive coverage is currently appropriate. The editors have provided a list of recent works at the end of the article to facilitate research and exploration of the topic.

"Is (or was) Blank a liberal?" The precise reply to this question inevitably begins with a throat-clearing preface such as, "It all depends on the period you have in mind—and the place. Are you speaking of someone in nineteenth-century England, the United States during the Franklin Roosevelt New Deal days, contemporary Great Britain, continental Europe, or contemporary U.S.A.?"

For Americans nurtured on the "liberal" tradition of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic party, the significance of the L word was quite clear. The private business establishment, left to its own devices, had brought about the economic collapse of 1929. "Rugged...