The merger of the Conservative Party of Bijan and the Bijani Democratic Party, Bijan's two largest centre-right political parties, took place in the summer of 1990, the culmination of nearly two decades of negotiation and false starts. The idea first came into being in the mid-1970s, when it became clear that neither of Bijan's two main right-of-center parties was independently capable of defeating the governing Bijani Labour Party.