Conservatism
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regarded as the establishment of the Republican Party’s complicity with interventionist New Deal policies (Foley, 1991). The conservative takeover of the Republican Party was completed in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan, a protégé of Goldwater, and later consolidated by George W. Bush and Donald Trump, although Trump’s conservatism was at best inconsistent, being more apparent on social issues such as abortion and immigration than on fiscal policy. As conservative ideology arose in reaction to the French Revolution and the process of modernization in the West, it is less easy to identify political conservatism outside Europe and North America. In Africa, Asia and Latin America, political movements have developed that sought to resist change and preserve traditional ways of life, but they have seldom employed specifically conservative arguments and values. An exception to this is perhaps the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has dominated politics in Japan since 1955. The LDP has close links with business interests and is committed to promoting a healthy private sector. At the same time, it has attempted to preserve traditional Japanese values and customs, and has therefore supported distinctively conservative principles such as loyalty, duty and hierarchy . Since the turn of the twenty-first century, forms of conservatism have emerged both within and beyond the West that have sought to blend the establishment of strong central authority under ‘strongman’ leaders with the mobilization of mass popular support on issues such as nationalism, economic progress and the defence of traditional values. Outside the West, examples of this have included Narendra Modi (see p. 262) in India, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and Jair Bolsorano in Brazil. This form of conservative politics is associated with the wider phenomenon of right- wing populism, as discussed in Chapter 8. Modern conservatism has undergone major changes since the 1970s, shaped by growing concerns about economic management and the welfare state. Particularly prominent in this respect were the Thatcher governments in the UK (1979–90) and the Reagan administration in the USA (1981–89), both of which practised an unusually radical and ideological brand of conservatism, commonly termed neoliberalism (see p. 63), which constituted one strain within what was once popularly called the New Right (see p. 62). Neoliberal ideas have drawn heavily on free-market economics and, in so doing, have exposed deep divisions within conservatism. Indeed, commentators argue that ‘ Thatcherism ’ and ‘Reaganism’, and the neoliberal project in general, do not properly belong within conservative ideology at all, so deeply are they influenced by classical liberal economics. Neoliberals have challenged traditional conservative economic views, but they nevertheless remain part of conservative ideology. In the first
place, they have not abandoned traditional conservative social principles such as a belief in order, authority and discipline, and in some respects they have strengthened them. Furthermore, neoliberal enthusiasm for the free market has exposed the extent to which conservatism had already been influenced by liberal ideas. From the late nineteenth century onwards, conservatism has been divided between paternalistic support for state intervention and a libertarian commitment to the free market. The significance of neoliberalism is that it sought to revive the electoral fortunes of conservatism by readjusting the balance between these traditions in favour of libertarianism (see p. 61).
Hierarchy: A pyramid-like ranked system of command and obedience, in which social position is unconnected with individual ability. Thatcherism: The free- market/strong state ideological stance associated with Margaret Thatcher; the UK version of the New Right political project.
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