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Conservatism
Few political concepts cause more confusion than
conservatism. Whereas most academic commenta-
tors agree that it is an ideology, many self-styled
“conservatives” hotly deny this. Even among aca-
demic 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 conser-
vatism 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 writ-
ers on conservatism is the claim that it is not an
ideology like liberalism or socialism; instead, con-
servatives are said to be pragmatic, making politi-
cal decisions on the basis of their knowledge of
specific circumstances, rather than trying to imple-
ment 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
Copyright 2010. SAGE Publications, Inc.
Vladimir Lenin was capable of being pragmatic in
certain circumstances, but obviously he was not a
conservative. For students of ideology, the impor-
tant point is to analyze the arguments of those
who attach a high priority to pragmatism regard-
less of circumstances. Equally, in familiar usage
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AN: 474292 ; Bevir, Mark.; Encyclopedia of Political Theory
Account: s8461332.main.eds
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 rela-
tion 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 politi-
cal 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 ratio-
nale for these distinctive approaches to politics.
Burkean Conservatism
The case for pragmatism as a habitual approach,
rather than an occasional enforced practice, found
its classic exposition in the writings of the Irish-
born author and politician Edmund Burke (1729–
1797). In his Reflections on the Revolution in
France (1790) and in other works, Burke had tried
to explain why radical change based on abstract
reasoning is always dangerous. In so doing, he fur-
nished opponents of the French Revolution with
an ideology.
The key conservative idea is that human beings
are imperfectible. This viewpoint has a long ances-
try; the French essayist Michel de Montaigne
(1533–1592) expresses it as well as anyone,
though ideological genealogists could carry their
search back to Plato and beyond. However,
Burke, can be seen as the first modern thinker
to embed the idea within a framework that is self-
consciously ideological, in the sense that his writ-
ings provide an explanation of contemporary
circumstances and a basis for political action. The
following propositions, all affirmed in Burke’s
Reflections, provide a good picture of the core
values of conservatism:
Individual human beings are creatures of passion
and prejudice as well as reason.
Despite unavoidable inequalities of wealth and
status, they are interdependent.

Society is thus an “organic” reality, not an
abstraction.
The state is the repository of human wisdom,
accumulated over many generations, and as such it
is worthy of considerable respect.
Change is at best a regrettable necessity, but at
times it is clearly unavoidable if greater evils are to
be avoided.
Proposals for change should be based on a careful
examination of existing circumstances.
If change is deemed to be necessary, it should be
based on previous practice rather than an abstract
plan because, although individual reason is weak,
the collective wisdom of many generations is likely
to be a reliable guide.
Radical change is always dangerous, but when it is
carried through in accordance with an abstract
plan it is sure to precipitate unforeseen difficulties,
leading to the destabilization of the most orderly
societies.
This prospectus explains why some conserva-
tives have denied that they are ideological. In their
eyes, ideology is synonymous with rigid ideas
about human nature, which commonly inspire
visions of ideal societies. Conservatives, by con-
trast, eschew utopia and thinks that human beings
will always vary widely in their personal attri-
butes. But they do so for reasons that are them-
selves ideological. Although conservatives deny
that individual people can be forced into the same
mold, their pessimistic assessment of human
behavior in a collective sense (i.e., that they are
not to be trusted) provides a guide to political
action, even if its practical implications are usually
negative.
In opposing the ideas of the leading French
revolutionaries, Burke was addressing himself to
ideas that can be characterized as distinctively
liberal. Burkean conservatives reject liberalism on
two levels—the micro and the macro. On the first
level, liberals are much too optimistic about the
human capacity for rational thought and conduct.
On the second level, liberals provide a false
understanding of society, seeing it as a fragmented
forum for competition between rational individu-
als instead of an organic whole in which every
person plays a valued part.
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Conservatism 283
Conservatism Since Burke
Burke was a whig rather than a supporter of the
British Tory Party, which adopted the Conservative
label in the 1830s to denote its opposition to the
liberal case for radical reform. (The word conser-
vative was first used in an ideological sense after
Burke’s death by the French writer and politician,
the Vicomte de Chateaubriand [1768–1848].) In
itself, Burke’s partisan allegiance should be enough
to undermine any attempt to equate “conserva-
tism” with the beliefs of the British Conservative
Party at any given time.
Another French writer associated with the con-
servative tradition is Joseph de Maistre (1753–
1821). However, de Maistre’s thought was heavily
influenced by religious considerations, and he was
strongly attached to monarchical rule. By contrast,
although Burke was a devout Christian his writ-
ings can be equally persuasive to people of a secu-
lar outlook, and although he was an eloquent
supporter of monarchy, his fundamental argu-
ments are equally applicable to republican
regimes.
There are, then, good reasons for tracing the
origins of conservatism to Burke and Britain
rather than to de Maistre and postrevolutionary
France (or, as we shall see, to America). However,
although Britain did not undergo a political revo-
lution at the end of the eighteenth century, its
society was being transformed in a way that
Burke could not have foreseen. Burke held liberal
views on economics and admired the works of
Adam Smith. But the most potent enemy of
Burkean conservatism was the operation of the
free market during the Industrial Revolution,
which dissolved social ties and made radical inno-
vation a regular occurrence. In turn, this led to
major political change and challenged the aristo-
cratic dominance, which had formed a central
assumption of Burke’s writings.
The Burkean view of society and politics was
expounded to defend a largely rural society, where
the hereditary aristocracy provided a pool of talent
from which political leaders should be recruited.
Whereas Burke could not have foreseen the way in
which free-market economics would transform
British society in unwelcome ways, the next gen-
eration of British conservative writers, like Samuel
Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), devoted much of
their energy to attacks on the social impact of the
 284 Conservatism
Industrial Revolution. This was an early indication
that modernity would prove deeply uncongenial to
those who were chiefly concerned with limiting the
social impact of change.
Despite the urgings of Coleridge and other con-
servatives, nineteenth-century Britain proved to be
deeply uncongenial to Burkean supporters of aris-
tocratic government and social stability. By 1918,
if not before, Burkean conservatism was no longer
able to inform a political platform with a realistic
chance of winning power in Britain. Essentially,
the creed was antipathetic toward democracy,
denying that every male (let alone female) inhabit-
ant over the age of 21 was entitled to an equal say
in the political process.
The British Conservative
Party After Conservatism
The continued success of the British Conservative
Party has lured many observers into the assump-
tion that “conservatism” is a flexible creed. The
real implication is that members of the British
Conservative Party were flexible, proving them-
selves capable of changing their presuppositions as
the price of continued political relevance. Liberal
ideas of various kinds filled the ideological vacuum
left within the Conservative Party after the Burkean
approach had become obsolete.
However, further impetus was provided by the
1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. In opposing
Bolshevism, members of the Conservative Party
could persuade themselves that they were resuming
the battle that Burke had fought against the French
revolutionaries. After all, like the ideologues of the
French Revolution, the Bolsheviks espoused a view
of human nature that could be attacked by conser-
vatives for its utopian character. But the ideas in
question were very different. The French revolu-
tionaries had prioritized human rights over eco-
nomic equality. The need to oppose the Bolsheviks
entailed a shift in ideological targeting, which the
transformed Conservative Party could easily
accommodate. The most effective attacks on
Bolshevism were derived from laissez-faire liberal-
ism, which asserted that state intervention of any
kind could be characterized as the first step on “the
road to serfdom.” As we have seen, Burke believed
that the state should be an object of respect, even
“veneration.” Such views had no place within the
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anti-totalitarian narrative that now gave the
Conservative Party its chief raison d’être. The only
surprise, in retrospect, is that the party leadership
remained in the hands of moderate liberals (the so-
called One Nation faction, who idolized the enig-
matic Benjamin Disraeli [1804–1881] rather than
Burke) for so long.
When the economic liberal Margaret Thatcher
became leader of the Conservative Party in 1975,
she was merely bringing to a logical end a process
that had begun with the Industrial Revolution. In
some respects, Thatcher can be seen as the ratio-
nalist liberal of Burkean nightmares, with limited
respect for established institutions or for history,
an emphasis on the individual rather than the col-
lective, and a feeling that most aristocrats were as
undeserving as the “idle poor.”
The American Perspective
If this analysis is accepted, the final eclipse of
Burkean conservatism as a political project in
Britain coincides almost exactly with the emergence
of the United States as the world’s most potent
power. Burke had spoken out in favor of the
American cause during the War of Independence.
But in doing so, he had taken a pragmatic line,
deploring the likely results of the British policy of
imposing taxes on the Americans without explicit
consent. Burke understood that the drive for
American independence arose from a liberal indi-
vidualism that was already enmeshed within the
customary practices of that fledgling nation,
whereas French political culture had been forged
in an era of absolute monarchy. Thus, he had felt
that independence for America would involve lim-
ited social change, whereas if France abolished the
monarchical system, its existing social order would
collapse. These views were confirmed by subse-
quent events—the U.S. Constitution embodied but
also restrained preexisting American liberalism,
whereas the French revolutionaries combined uto-
pian thinking with mass murder.
From this perspective, it seems odd that millions
of Americans should continue to regard themselves
as “conservative,” more than two centuries
after their liberal revolution. Some American aca-
demics (notably Russell Kirk [1918–1994]) have
been unflinching admirers of Burke. They are, how-
ever, often described as “paleo-conservatives,” in

recognition of their attachment to political ideas
that belong to the predemocratic era. Most other
notable political figures who have identified them-
selves with “conservative” ideology are best under-
stood as liberals who are reluctant to accept the
logical consequences of their creed. In contempo-
rary America (as in Britain) there are many people
who extol the virtues of the free market while
deploring the decline of traditional moral stan-
dards. This position is vulnerable to the objection
that the free market has been the principal agent of
moral change in America and other capitalist states.
Modern conservatives have thus been forced to
choose between economic liberalism and support
for traditional morality, often favoring the former
over the latter.
One thinker who has enjoyed recognition on
both sides of the Atlantic and who is often seen as
an exponent of a conservative approach is the
British philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1901–
1990). However, Oakeshott’s most celebrated essay
relating to this subject, “On Being Conservative”
(1956), eschews policy prescriptions and instead
portrays conservatism as a “disposition,” which,
while agreeable, has no necessary connection with
any of the established ideological traditions.
Why do some individualists in both Britain and
America continue to see themselves as “conserva-
tives,” when the adoption of this ideological label
makes so little sense in the contemporary context?
The answer, at least in part, reflects a mistaken
equation: Burke = conservatism = opposition to
revolution = opposition to Soviet communism =
antagonism toward the state. In political parlance
words are often used in a loose fashion. It is the
task of academics, however, to clear a path
through the resulting confusion. In reality, too
often academics have accepted the self-ascription
of political actors at face value, and have drawn
the conclusion that “conservatism” must be a
diverse ideology, which embraces economic liber-
als as well as people who strongly dislike the radical
social impact of economic liberalism. This trend
has been sustained through the coinage of question-
begging neologisms such as “liberal-conservative,”
“conservative-liberal,” or “neo-conservative.” The
latter of these labels is associated with individuals
who believe that Western values can be exported
around the globe without regard to local
context—the antithesis of Burkean ideas. It is even
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Conservatism 285
stated with confidence that the Australian Liberal
Party is “conservative,” although in this case
political labels are misleading and the ideas of the
Australian Liberal Party can only be understood
within the liberal tradition.
Conservatism in the Twenty-First Century
It has been argued here that Burkean conservatism
is a distinctive ideology, which, in spite of the acci-
dental survival of parties which call themselves
“Conservative,” has borne marginal relevance to
partisan disputes within mature liberal democra-
cies in the past 100 years. Superficially, though, in
many countries twentieth-century politics was
heavily influenced by parties that either described
themselves as Conservatives (as in the United
Kingdom) or were associated with “conservatism.”
For example, the highly successful Christian
Democratic parties in post-war West Germany and
Italy were supposed to be conservative, and in
France, Gaullism is often seen as a conservative
movement. To varying extents, such organizations
tried to cushion the social impact of free-market
policies, in contrast to the British Conservative
Party, which, under Margaret Thatcher (leader,
1975–1990, prime minister, 1979–1990), sought
to promote a program of radical ideological reform
when “pragmatic” considerations would have dic-
tated a far more cautious approach.
But in the face of globalization European par-
ties that saw themselves as “conservative” pre-
sided over societies in which change was a constant
companion, rather than an occasional and
unwanted intruder. In the United States, “conser-
vatism” was purportedly represented by politi-
cians like Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) and Newt
Gingrich (b. 1943), who were able to assemble
election-winning coalitions without reflecting on
any tension between rhetorical support for “tradi-
tional” moral values and practical assistance to
the free-market forces that undermined key social
institutions like the family.
The Burkean approach to political questions
was still common among the voters of liberal
democracies at the dawn of the twenty-first cen-
tury; there is, after all, little cause for confidence in
the human capacity for reason, and the experience
of the past 100 years may be seen as illustrating
the dangers of radical political change based on
 286 Constant, Benjamin
abstract blueprints. But few major Western politi-
cal parties accommodate conservative views. Even
growing concern about the environmental effects
of industrialization, which might have sparked
renewed interest in conservatism as a political
project, tends to be addressed within an ideologi-
cal framework that remains distinctively liberal—
seeking for ways in which liberal society can be
sustained, rather than examining different views
of the world. In the absence of a realistic alterna-
tive, in some countries those ideological conserva-
tives who retain an interest in partisan politics feel
increasingly attracted by organizations of the
populist, reactionary right, which Edmund Burke
would have abhorred.
Mark Garnett
See also American Founding; Ancien Régime; Burke,
Edmund; Liberalism
Further Readings
Burke, E. (2006). Reflections on the revolution in France.
Mineola, NY: Dover Publications. (Original work
published 1790)
Hayek, F. A. (1960). Why I am not a conservative. In
The constitution of liberty. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Honderich, T. (2005). Conservatism: Burke, Nozick,
Bush, Blair? London: Pluto Press.
Kirk, R. (1954). The conservative mind. London: Faber
& Faber.
Oakeshott, M. (1962). On being conservative. In
Rationalism in politics and other essays. London:
Methuen.
Quinton, A. (1978). The politics of imperfection.
London: Faber & Faber.
Scruton, R. (2001). The meaning of conservatism (3rd
ed.). Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Willetts, D. (1992). Modern conservatism.
Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
Constant, Benjamin
(1767–1830)
Benjamin Constant was a Swiss-born French
political theorist, novelist, intellectual, and politi-
cian from the later stages of the French Revolution
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through the Napoleonic era and the Restoration.
He made major contributions to the coalescence
of liberal theory and indeed is sometimes thought
of as the first liberal theorist; after Alexis de
Tocqueville he is the probably the most important
French liberal thinker. Best known in political
theory today for his contrast between the liberty
of the ancients (the right to participate in public
life) and that of the moderns (individual freedom
in the private sphere), he was a longtime defender
of freedom of speech, critic of slavery, and sup-
porter of responsible parliamentary-ministerial
government.
Constant entered French political life in the mid-
1790s, after university educations in Germany and
Scotland and service in minor diplomatic posts. He
joined a circle of moderate republicans centered
around Germaine de Staël, a fellow Protestant
from Switzerland and the daughter of the former
French finance minister Jacques Necker; Constant
and de Staël had a long and stormy romantic rela-
tionship for more than a decade. He wrote some
minor political pamphlets and rose to office; he
and de Staël provided support to Napoleon
Bonaparte as a moderate force but broke with him
as he revealed his absolutist plans. They went into
exile, sometimes traveling through Europe and
sometimes living at her estate in Switzerland.
During those years of exile, both before and
after he broke with de Staël in 1808, Constant
began serious intellectual writing on politics and
religion. Many of his later published writings
derive from two large texts written circa 1806–
1810, one on “the possibility of a republican gov-
ernment in a large country,” which is about
political institution and procedures, and one on
“principles of politics,” which lays out substantive
arguments for individual liberty. In 1814–1815 he
published the first important adaptation of these
works, the anti-Napoleonic “On the Spirit of
Conquest and Usurpation.” After Napoleon’s fall
he returned to France and French politics. During
Napoleon’s return during the Hundred Days,
Constant collaborated with him on the drafting of
a constitutional-monarchical constitution, at a
serious cost to his reputation.
Constant’s political career resumed in 1819; he
spent the rest of his life as a member of the
Chamber of Deputies, as a member of the liberal
independent opposition.