Conservatism

Question 1

Conservatism: core beliefs

Answer 1

Tradition

human imperfection

organic society

hierarchy and authority

property

Question 2

Authoritarianism

Answer 2

A belief that strong central authority, imposed from above, is either desirable or necessary, and therefore demands un - questioning obedience.

Question 3

New right

Answer 3

An ideological trend within conservatism that embraces a blend of market individualism and social authoritarianism.

Question 4

Tradition

Answer 4

Values, practices or institutions that have endured through time and, in particular, been passed down from one generation to the next.

Question 5

Anomie

Answer 5

A weakening of values and normative rules, associated with feelings of isolation, loneliness and meaninglessness.

Question 6

Organicism

Answer 6

A belief that society operates like an organism or living entity, the whole being more than a collection of its individual parts.

Question 7

Hierarchy

Answer 7

A gradation of social positions or status; hierarchy implies structural or fixed inequality in which position is unconnected with individual ability.

Question 8

Functionalism

Answer 8

The theory that social institutions and practices should be understood in terms of the functions they carry out in sustaining the larger social system.

Question 9

Authority

Answer 9

The right to exert influence over others by virtue of an acknowledged obligation to obey.

Question 10

Natural aristocracy

Answer 10

The idea that talent and leadership are innate or inbred qualities that cannot be acquired through effort or self-advancement.

Question 11

Property

Answer 11

The ownership of physical goods or wealth, whether by private individuals, groups of people or the state.

Question 12

Privatization

Answer 12

The transfer of state assets from the public to the private sector, reflecting a contraction of the state’s responsibilities.

Question 13

Populism

Answer 13

A belief that popular instincts and wishes are the principal legitimate guide to political action, often reflecting distrust of or hostility towards political elites

Question 14

Christian democracy

Answer 14

An ideological tradition within European conservatism that is characterized by a commitment to the social market and qualified economic intervention.

Question 15

Social market

Answer 15

An economy that is structured by market principles but which operates in the context of a society in which cohesion is maintained through a comprehensive welfare system and effective public services.

Question 16

Economic liberalism

Answer 16

A belief in the market as a self-regulating mechanism that tends naturally to deliver general prosperity and opportunities for all

Question 17

Neoliberalism

Answer 17

An updated version of classical political economy that is dedicated to market individualism and minimal statism

Question 18

Neoconservatism

Answer 18

A modern version of social conservatism that emphasizes the need to restore order, return to traditional or family values, or to revitalize nationalism.

Question 19

Permissiveness

Answer 19

The willingness to allow people to make their own moral choices; permissiveness suggests that there are no authoritative values.

Question 20

Washington consensus

Answer 20

A neoliberal framework embraced since the 1980s by key Washington-based international institutions, reflecting support for fiscal discipline, privatization, and financial and trade liberalization.

Question 21

Civic conservatism

Answer 21

A form of conservatism, rooted in social conservatism, that calls for a transformation of the civic culture to counter-balance what are seen as the ‘excesses’ of state control and the free market.

Question 22

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679)

Answer 22

An English political philosopher, Hobbes, in his classic work Leviathan ([1651] 1968), used social contact theory to defend absolute government as the only alternative to anarchy and disorder, and proposed that citizens have an unqualified obligation towards their state. Though his view of human nature and his defence of authoritarian order have a conservative character, Hobbes’ rationalist and individualist methodology prefigured early liberalism. His emphasis on power-seeking as the primary human urge has also been used to explain the behaviour of states in the international system.

Question 23

Edmund Burke (1729–97)

Answer 23

A Dublin-born British statesman and political theorist, Burke was the father of the Anglo-American conservative political tradition. In his major work, Reflections on the Revolution in France ([1790] 1968), Burke deeply opposed the attempt to recast French politics in accordance with abstract principles such as ‘the universal rights of man’, arguing that wisdom resides largely in experience, tradition and history. Burke is associated with a pragmatic willingness to ‘change in order to conserve’, reflected, in his view, in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688.

Question 24

Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992)

Answer 24

An Austrian economist and political philosopher, Hayek was a firm believer in individualism and market order, and an implacable critic of socialism. His pioneering work, The Road to Serfdom (1944) developed a then deeply unfashionable defence of laissez-faire and attacked economic intervention as implicitly totalitarian. In later works, such as The Constitution of Liberty (1960) and Law, Legislation and Liberty (1979), Hayek supported a modified form of traditionalism and upheld an Anglo- American version of constitutionalism that emphasized limited government.

Question 25

Michael Oakeshott (1901–90)

Answer 25

A British political philosopher, Oakeshott advanced a powerful defence of a nonideological style of politics that supported a cautious and piecemeal approach to change. Distrusting rationalism, he argued in favour of traditional values and established customs on the grounds that the conservative disposition is ‘to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible’. Oakeshott’s best- known works include Rationalism in Politics (1962) and On Human Conduct (1975).

Question 26

Irving Kristol (1920–2009)

Answer 26

A US journalist and social critic, Kristol was one of the leading exponents of American neoconservatism. He abandoned liberalism in the 1970s and became increasingly critical of the spread of welfarism and the ‘counterculture’. While accepting the need for a predominantly market-based economy and fiercely rejecting socialism, Kristol criticized libertarianism in the marketplace as well as in morality. His best-known writings include Two Cheers for Capitalism (1978) and Reflections of a Neo-Conservative (1983).

Question 27

Robert Nozick (1938–2002)

Answer 27

A US political philosopher, Nozick developed a form of rights-based libertarianism in response to the ideas of John Rawls (see p. 55). Drawing on Locke (see p. 54) and nineteenth-century US individualists, he argued that property rights should be strictly upheld, provided that property was justly purchased or justly transferred from one person to another. His major work, Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), rejects welfare and redistribution, and advances the case for minimal government and minimal taxation. In later life, Nozick modified his extreme libertarianism.