Christian democracy Flashcards
Traditional conservatism’s evolution outside the UK…
Outside the UK, traditional conservatism after 1945 evolved rather differently. The main reason for this was that other western European nations felt the effects of fascism much more acutely. Revolution, violent nationalism, totalitarian government, military defeat and national humiliation all had a huge effect on the psychology of continental conservatives.
After 1945, European conservatives therefore developed a variant of traditional conservatism known as Christian democracy. However, this post-war European conservatism is not wholly dissimilar to traditional conservatism in the UK.
Overlaps between Christian democracy and traditional conservatism…
> There is the same belief in Judaeo-Christian morality as a force for binding society together.
> There is the same belief in authority and hierarchy.
> There is the same commitment to social conservatism, the same emphasis upon marriage and family life, and the same scepticism towards socially liberal causes such as abortion and sexual equality.
> There is the same scepticism towards free-market economics. Christian democracy thus stresses the ‘social market’, a form of capitalism that draws upon Roman Catholic principles of obligation and communal duty, but with echoes of Disraeli’s ‘paternalistic’ conservatism.
> There is the same acceptance of an enlarged state: like post-war conservatism in the UK, Christian democracy was comfortable with Keynesian (state-managed) capitalism, high public spending and an expansive welfare state.
Attitude towards the nation-state…
In countries like Germany, Italy and Spain, the experience of fascism left conservative politicians explicitly wary of nationalism and traditional notions of patriotism.
The experience of invasion, occupation, collaboration and national shame deeply affected conservative attitudes towards national identity and national self-determination.
Supranationalism…
One crucial effect of this was to make post-war continental conservatives amenable to supranationalism, an idea first hinted at by Schuman’s plan for limited economic integration in the 1950s and later embodied by the European Economic Community and the later European Union. Here again the Roman Catholic influence within Christian democracy was helpful for continental conservatives, given that the Roman Catholic Church itself practices supranational authority.
British conservatives suspicion of Christian democracy’s supranationalism…
For many British conservatives, meanwhile, the suspicion has always been that the real aim of Christian democracy’s supranationalism is to eliminate ‘the nation’ as a feature of conservative philosophy and instead make ‘the region’ the main focus of communal identity. For this reason, many British conservatives regard Christian democracy as a form of ‘no-nation conservatism’ and therefore something for which they feel little affinity.
