Conservatism

Few political concepts cause more confusion than conservatism. Whereas most academic commentators agree that it is an ideology, many self-styled “conservatives” hotly deny this. Even among academic commentators, conservatism tends to be treated differently from other ideologies, and most of the varying accounts are open to contestation. This entry first reviews the ways in which conservatism has been defined by Edmund Burke and by later thinkers. It then considers the influence of the conservative perspective on political life in Britain, the United States, and in Western political thought more generally.

The first of many hurdles encountered by writers on conservatism is the claim that it is not an ideology like liberalism or socialism; instead, conservatives are said to be pragmatic, making political decisions on the basis of their knowledge of specific circumstances, rather than trying to implement policies on the basis of abstract theorizing. An empirical approach to politics is indeed an essential ingredient of conservatism. But this is not to say that all pragmatists are conservative. Even Vladimir Lenin was capable of being pragmatic in certain circumstances, but obviously he was not a conservative. For students of ideology, the important point is to analyze the arguments of those who attach a high priority to pragmatism regardless of circumstances. Equally, in familiar usage “conservatism” is taken to denote an opposition to change. But opponents of change can be found within all political systems, whatever their nature, and it would be odd to use the same word in relation to people who have nothing in common beyond their support for existing governments. Again, the key point here is to study the reasons why certain people oppose political change.

One way to overcome the problem of definition is to identify conservatism with the view that political decisions should always be taken on the basis of existing facts and that change is always regrettable. But even that would be insufficient to disclose the nature of conservatism as a distinctive ideology. To make progress in this task we need to examine the writings of individuals who have provided a rationale for these distinctive approaches to politics.