IV.

Conservatism in Europe

Conservative movements and groups have flourished widely in continental Europe, but few conservative parties similar to the British model in organization, doctrine, mass membership, and attachment to parliamentary democracy ever developed. European conservatives, until the end of the 19th century, generally rejected democratic principles and institutions, including, in some cases, participation in elections and the universal franchise. They opted instead for monarchies (as in France, 1814-1848) or for authoritarian government (as with Bonapartist France, 1799-1814 and 1851-1870, and in imperial Germany, after 1871). With economies later to industrialize than Britain’s, conservative parties often acted as the mouthpiece for agricultural interests and the tariff policies that such interests demanded, hence a resistance to modernizing and urban, economic forces. Some continental conservative movements ultimately gave their support to authoritarian and totalitarian movements—fascism in Italy and Spain, Nazism in Germany—between 1920 and the end of World War II in 1945. Conservative, authoritarian governments existed in Portugal and Spain until the 1970s.

A dominant conservative doctrine in many European countries, notably in France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, has been “social Catholicism” and corporatism. This was inspired by the social doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church expressed in two papal encyclicals, Rerum novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo anno (1931). In the name of social justice and order, corporatism advocates a close collaboration between employers and workers under the direction of the state, in all matters regarding conditions of work, wages, prices, production, and exchange. Its aim is to substitute collective considerations for the free play of the market and to restrict competition. After World War I, corporatism was institutionalized by the state in various forms in Spain, Italy, and Portugal.