I.

Introduction

Conservatism, tenet of those displaying a temperament instinctively adverse to innovation, especially when the pace of change seems dangerously rapid, and hence to threaten the survival of traditional values. Conservatism strives rather for balance and order within society as an organic unity, accepting the need to adapt to changing circumstances while avoiding extremes. It is to be distinguished therefore from “reaction”, which would resist all change and even seek to revert to a golden age by then in the past.

It is vital to distinguish between conservatism as a political and social attitude (where the word has no initial capital letter) and Conservatism as the creed of a Conservative Party and of Conservatives who belong to that party (mainly in the United Kingdom, where the Conservative Party has been one of the two major groups competing for power over the past two centuries). Though Conservatives have generally been politically active in parties that valued tradition more highly than modernization or other types of change, their parties’ policies have not invariably been conservative in the broader sense; Margaret Thatcher, for example, pursued mainly radical, non-conservative policies, while successfully leading the British Conservative Party between 1975 and 1990.

Originally, conservatism as a coherent political standpoint arose in reaction to the rationalist assumptions of the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century. Conservatives advocated belief in faith over reason, tradition over free enquiry, hierarchy over equality, and collective values over individual rights; they prized divine or natural law over secular law. At any one time in a given society, conservatism therefore emphasizes the merits of the status quo and endorses the prevailing distribution of power, wealth, and social standing. Political conservative thought, however, has reconciled itself with constitutional democracy and individual rights, as well as with prudent and orderly social and economic change. That adaptability, the recognition that it is frequently necessary to accept some change in order to conserve values and associations inherited from the past, has enabled the conservative idea itself to retain its significance, and conservative parties to remain influential, through two centuries of unprecedented social and technological modernization.