section_path: History/20th century
section_name: 20th century
paragraph_text: 20th century
  
  At the beginning of the 20th century in Europe, the liberal–conservative divide that characterized most party systems was disrupted by the emergence of socialist parties, which attracted the support of organized trade unions.
  
  During the wave of decolonization in the mid-20th century, many newly sovereign countries outside of Europe and North America developed party systems that often emerged from their movements for independence. For example, a system of political parties arose out of factions in the Indian independence movement, and was strengthened and stabilized by the policies of Indira Gandhi in the 1970s. The formation of the Indian National Congress, which developed in the late 19th century as a pro-independence faction in British India and immediately became a major political party after Indian independence, foreshadowed the dynamic in many newly independent countries; for example, the Uganda National Congress was a pro-independence party and the first political party in Uganda, and its name was chosen as an homage to the Indian National Congress.
  
  As broader suffrage rights and eventually universal suffrage slowly spread throughout democracies, political parties expanded dramatically, and only then did a vision develop of political parties as intermediaries between the full public and the government.