Party Analysis: Die Unabhängigen (Liechtenstein)
Political Independence in the Microstate
Die Unabhängigen (DU), or The Independents, once appeared to challenge one of Europe’s most stable and insulated political systems. Founded in 2013 by Harry Quaderer - a former member of the centre-right Patriotic Union (VU) - the party positioned itself as an anti-establishment corrective in a polity long dominated by elite consensus. Rejecting the label of a conventional party, DU framed itself as a loose alliance of independent candidates united less by ideology than by opposition to cartel politics, bureaucratic inertia, and what it saw as creeping external influence, particularly from the European Union.
For a brief period, this message resonated. DU entered the Landtag in 2013 with four seats and expanded its presence to five seats in 2017, securing 18.4 per cent of the vote and becoming the third-largest political force. In doing so, it disrupted a party system that had changed little since the mid-twentieth century. Yet the breakthrough proved fragile. An internal split in 2018 led to the creation of the breakaway Democrats for Liechtenstein (DpL), hollowing out DU’s parliamentary core. By 2021, DU had fallen below the country’s punishing 8 per cent threshold, winning no seats. It did not contest the February 2025 election, and by the end of that year had effectively vanished from parliamentary politics.
DU’s rise and collapse illustrates both the permeability - and the resilience - of Liechtenstein’s political exceptionalism.
Why Die Unabhängigen Exists
DU emerged from a convergence of personal rupture and structural frustration. Quaderer’s departure from the VU reflected dissatisfaction with a political order dominated for decades by grand coalitions between the VU and the Progressive Citizens’ Party (FBP), an arrangement that has governed almost continuously since the 1930s. While this model delivered stability and prosperity, it also fostered perceptions of elite closure, limited accountability, and constrained political choice.
DU capitalised on these grievances by rejecting comprehensive programmes in favour of targeted institutional demands. Its core proposals - direct election of the government, expanded voting rights for citizens abroad, fiscal restraint, and scepticism toward deeper European integration - were framed as common-sense correctives rather than ideological departures. In this sense, DU mirrored a broader European pattern: populist-style mobilisation not against democracy itself, but against the perception that existing democratic institutions no longer offered meaningful alternatives.
The timing mattered. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, debates over immigration, sovereignty, and public spending gained salience even in affluent microstates. DU’s success signalled that Liechtenstein was not immune to these currents, despite its wealth, monarchy, and consensus culture. By breaking the post-1993 pattern of three- or four-party dominance, DU exposed latent voter appetite for outsiders - albeit within strict structural limits.
What the Party Has Achieved
DU’s principal achievement was disruption rather than transformation. Between 2013 and 2021, it demonstrated that new entrants could clear the electoral threshold and sustain parliamentary representation, even in a system designed to privilege established parties. Its presence broadened debate on immigration policy, fiscal discipline, and relations with European institutions, forcing the governing parties to respond - if only rhetorically - to issues they had previously managed through elite accommodation.
Electorally, DU’s third-place finishes in two consecutive elections were unprecedented in modern Liechtenstein politics. Yet this success was shallow. The party struggled to convert visibility into institutional leverage. Excluded from coalition government and reliant on a small cadre of personalities, DU lacked the organisational depth needed to weather internal disagreement.
The 2018 split proved fatal. When three deputies defected to form the DpL, they took much of DU’s credibility and parliamentary capital with them. The irony is that DU’s greatest indirect impact came after its decline: the DpL went on to secure six seats in the 2025 election - the strongest result ever achieved by a third party - reshaping opposition dynamics more effectively than DU ever had. Since losing representation, DU has remained largely marginal, issuing sporadic commentary but exerting no discernible policy influence.
What Success Would Look Like
For DU, success would mean overcoming the structural barriers that have so far confined it to episodic relevance. In the short term, this would require re-entering the Landtag by surpassing the 8 per cent threshold - no small task in a fragmented opposition space increasingly dominated by the DpL. Parliamentary presence alone, however, would be insufficient. To matter, DU would need enough seats to complicate coalition arithmetic or force concessions from the VU - FBP bloc.
Medium-term success would involve institutionalising its core demands. Proposals such as direct election of the government - debated nationally and rejected in a 2024 referendum - remain central to its identity. Embedding these ideas into mainstream discourse, even without immediate adoption, would represent a partial victory.
Longer term, DU’s ambition has been to normalise pluralism in a system built on consensus, offering a permanent alternative to the dominant duopoly. Achieving this would require rebuilding organisational capacity, broadening its candidate base, and avoiding further fragmentation - conditions that, given its recent inactivity, appear increasingly remote.
Electoral Rules and Strategic Constraints
Liechtenstein’s electoral system both enabled DU’s rise and accelerated its fall. The open-list proportional representation system - allocating 25 seats across two constituencies with extensive opportunities for panachage and cumulation - favours well-known individuals and personal networks over rigid party loyalty. This initially played to DU’s advantage, allowing prominent candidates to attract cross-party support.
Yet the national 8 per cent threshold, among the highest in Europe relative to parliament size, imposes severe penalties on fragmentation. Small shifts in vote share can mean the difference between representation and total exclusion. DU’s 4.2 per cent in 2021 translated into zero seats, erasing its parliamentary presence overnight.
High turnout, widespread postal voting, and entrenched coalition norms further advantage incumbents. For outsiders, success depends on concentrated regional strength and disciplined coordination - conditions undermined by DU’s split and the emergence of ideologically proximate rivals. In a polity designed to reward stability, the system leaves little margin for error.
How Critics See It
DU’s opponents have consistently framed it as a disruptive rather than constructive force. The VU and FBP portray it as undermining consensus politics without offering workable alternatives, while the left-leaning Free List criticises its scepticism toward immigration and European integration as economically risky in a state deeply embedded in the European Economic Area.
The 2018 schism reinforced narratives of internal incoherence, with critics arguing that DU’s rejection of formal structure made it incapable of managing disagreement. Some observers view the DpL as having inherited DU’s more pragmatic elements, leaving DU associated with sharper rhetoric and diminished credibility.
In a political culture that prizes predictability and elite cooperation, DU has been cast less as a corrective than as a spoiler - fragmenting opposition space without delivering sustained reform.
How It May Be Remembered
DU’s historical significance will lie less in what it achieved than in what it revealed. If it disappears entirely, it will be remembered as a brief rupture in Liechtenstein’s otherwise tranquil party system: a 2010s insurgency that exposed dissatisfaction with elite consensus but ultimately succumbed to institutional barriers and internal division.
More generously, historians may place DU alongside the DpL as evidence that even highly stable microstates are subject to the same pressures reshaping European politics elsewhere - pressures that occasionally crack, but rarely shatter, entrenched systems. Should the grand coalition tradition weaken in future decades, DU may be credited with opening the first fissures.
Absent such a transformation, however, its fate seems clearer. In a century’s time, amid Liechtenstein’s enduring monarchy and prosperity, Die Unabhängigen may survive only as a footnote: proof that populist impulses can surface even in Europe’s most consensual polities - but that, here at least, they struggle to endure.