What is "country party"

Country Party may refer to

• In Australia:
  • Country Party of Australia, now called the National Party of Australia
  • Australian Country Party (2004), formerly the Australian Country Alliance in Victoria
• In Great Britain:
  • Country Party (Britain), opponents of the Court Party and the government, late 17th early 18th century
  • Ultra-Tories, active 1829–32
• Country Party (New Zealand), active in the 1920s and 1930s
• PNG Country Party, Papua New Guinea
• Country Party (Rhode Island), active in the 1780s
• Wyoming Country Party, formed in 2012
• "Country Party" (song), a song by Johnny Lee

The Country Party of New Zealand was a political party which based itself around rural voters. It was represented in Parliament from 1928 to 1938. Its policies were a mixture of rural advocacy and social credit theory.

The Country Party, Rhode Island's anti-federalist political party, controlled the Rhode Island General Assembly from 1786 to 1790 and opposed the Federalist Party, which supported the U.S. Constitution. The Federalists were largely from the "town" of Providence, Rhode Island, while the Country Party members were from the surrounding rural areas.

The Country Party opposed the U.S. Constitution largely because of civil liberties concerns (leading to support for the Bill of Rights), distrust of distant government, opposition to slavery in the Constitution, and disagreements about monetary policy, specifically Rhode Island's desire to honor state-issued paper currency as legal tender.

Country Party is a song written by Rick Nelson and recorded by American country music artist Johnny Lee. It was released in May 1977 as the third single from the album of the same name, Country Party. It is a slight re-write of Rick Nelson's song, Garden Party. The song reached number 15 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart and number 50 on the Canadian RPM Country Tracks chart.

In Britain in the era 1680–1740, especially in the days of Robert Walpole (1720s to 1740s), the Country Party was a coalition of Tories and disaffected Whigs. It was a movement rather than an organized party and had no formal structure or leaders. It claimed to be a nonpartisan force fighting for the nation’s interest—the whole “Country”—against the self-interested actions of the Court Party, that is the politicians in power in London. Country men believed the Court party was corrupting Britain by using patronage to buy support and was threatening English and Scottish liberties and the proper balance of authority by shifting power from Parliament to the prime minister. It sought to constrain the Court by opposing standing armies, calling for annual elections to Parliament (instead of the seven-year term in effect), and wanted to fix power in the hands of the landed gentry rather than the royal officials, urban merchants or bankers. It opposed any practices it saw as corruption.

The Country party attracted a number of influential writers (such as Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, and Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun) and political theorists. The ideology of the party faded away in England but became a powerful force in the American colonies, where its tracts strongly motivated the Patriots to oppose what the Country Party had exposed as British tyranny and to develop a powerful political philosophy of Republicanism in the United States.

The Country Party was a political party in South Australia in the first part of the 20th century. It was formed out of the Farmers and Settlers Association in September 1917 to represent the association's interests in parliament. The party endorsed seven candidates in the 1918 election, with two elected. In the early years, their representatives were usually identified as Farmers and Settlers' Association representatives or as the parliamentary wing of the Farmers and Settlers' Association, but referred to in some sources as Country Party, Independent Country Party or independent members. The Country Party name was formally adopted after the 1921 election.

The Country Party eventually merged with the Liberal Federation to create the Liberal and Country League (LCL) in 1932.