Liberal conservatism

Liberal conservatism is a political ideology combining conservative policies with liberal stances, especially on ethical and social issues, or a brand of political conservatism strongly influenced by liberalism.^[1]

Liberal conservatism incorporates the classical liberal view of minimal government intervention in the economy, according to which individuals should be free to participate in the market and generate wealth without government interference.^[2] However, individuals cannot be thoroughly depended on to act responsibly in other spheres of life, therefore liberal conservatives believe that a strong state is necessary to ensure law and order and social institutions are needed to nurture a sense of duty and responsibility to the nation.^[2] It is a political position which also supports civil liberties along with some social conservative positions and is usually regarded as a centre-right ideology. In western Europe, especially northern Europe, liberal conservatism is the dominant form of contemporary conservatism and has also adopted some socially liberal positions.

As both "conservatism" and "liberalism" have had different meanings over time and across countries, the term "liberal conservatism" has been used in quite different ways. It usually contrasts with aristocratic conservatism, which rejects the principle of equality as something in discordance with human nature and emphasizes instead the idea of natural inequality. As conservatives in democratic countries have embraced typical liberal institutions such as the rule of law, private property, the market economy and constitutional representative government, the liberal element of liberal conservatism became consensual among conservatives. In some countries (e.g. the United Kingdom and the United States), the term "liberal conservatism" came to be understood simply as "conservatism" in popular culture,^[3] prompting some conservatives who embraced more strongly classical liberal values to call themselves "libertarians" instead.^[4]

Nevertheless, in the United States conservatives often combine the economic individualism of classical liberals with a Burkean form of conservatism that emphasizes the natural inequalities between men, the irrationality of human behavior as the basis for the human drive for order and stability and the rejection of natural rights as the basis for government.^[5] However, from a different perspective, American conservatism (a "hybrid of conservatism and classical liberalism") has exalted three tenets of Burkean conservatism, namely the diffidence toward the power of the state, the preference of liberty over equality, and patriotism while rejecting the three remaining tenets, namely loyalty to traditional institutions and hierarchies, scepticism regarding progress and elitism.^[6] Consequently, in the United States the term "liberal conservatism" is not used and American modern liberalism happens to be quite different from the European brand. The opposite is true in Latin America, where economically liberal conservatism is often labelled under the rubric of neoliberalism both in popular culture and academic discourse.^[7]

For their part, in their embracement of liberal and free market principles European liberal conservatives are clearly distinguishable from those conservatives who have embraced national conservative views, more socially conservative stances and/or outright populism, let alone a right-wing populist posture. In much of central and northwestern Europe, especially in Germanic and traditionally Protestant countries, a divide between conservatives (including Christian democrats) and liberals persists. On the other hand, in those countries where liberal conservative movements have more recently entered the political mainstream, such as Italy and Spain, the terms "liberal" and "conservative" may be understood as synonymous. Often this involves stressing free market economics and the belief in individual responsibility together with the defense of civil rights and support for a limited welfare state. Compared to traditional centre-right politics, such as those proposed by Christian democrats, liberal conservatism is less traditionalist and more right-libertarian economically, favouring low taxes and minimal state intervention in the economy. In the modern European discourse, "liberal conservatism" usually encompasses centre-right political outlooks that reject at least to some extent social conservatism. This position is also associated with support for moderate forms of social safety net and environmentalism. In this sense, "liberal conservatism" has been espoused for instance by Nordic conservative parties (the Moderate Party in Sweden, the Conservative Party in Norway and the National Coalition Party in Finland ), which have seen right-wing populist parties emerge to their right and do not comprise Christian democrats who form separate parties and the British Conservative Party under David Cameron, who in an interview shortly after taking office as Prime Minister in 2010 said that he had always described himself as a "liberal conservative".^[8] In his first speech to a Conservative Party's conference in 2006, Cameron had defined this as believing in individual freedom and human rights, but being skeptical of "grand schemes to remake the world".^[9]

Historically, in the 18th and 19th centuries "conservatism" comprised a set of principles based on concern for established tradition, respect for authority and religious values. This form of traditionalist or classical conservatism is often considered to be exemplified by the writings of Joseph de Maistre in the post-Enlightenment age. Contemporaneous "liberalism" – now recalled as classical liberalism – advocated both political freedom for individuals and a free market in the economic sphere. Ideas of this sort were promulgated by John Locke, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, who are respectively remembered as the fathers of classical liberalism, the separation of church and state, economic liberalism, utilitarianism and social liberalism.

According to scholar Andrew Vincent, the maxim of liberal conservatism is "economics is prior to politics".^[10] Others emphasize the openness of historical change and a suspicion of tyrannical majorities behind the hailing of individual liberties and traditional virtues, by authors such as Edmund Burke and Alexis de Tocqueville,^[11] as the basis of current liberal conservatism as seen both in the works of Raymond Aron and Michael Oakeshott and the ideological outlook of centre-right parties. However, there is general agreement that the original liberal conservatives were those who combined conservative social attitudes with an economically liberal outlook, adapting a previous aristocratic understanding of natural inequalities between men to the rule of meritocracy – without directly criticizing privileges of birth as long as individual liberties were guaranteed. Over time, the majority of conservatives in the Western world came to adopt free market economic ideas as the Industrial Revolution progressed and the aristocracy lost its power, to the extent that such ideas are now generally considered as part of conservatism. Nonetheless, in most countries the term "liberal" is used to describe those with free market economic views. This is the case, for example, in continental Europe,^[12] Australia^[13] and Latin America.^[14]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Liberal conservatism" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

•  Iran: Kargozaran

• Conservative liberalism
• Libertarian conservatism
• Progressive conservatism
• Neoconservatism

• McAnulla, Stuart (2006). British Politics: A Critical Introduction. A&C Black. ISBN 0-826-46155-7. 
• Johnston, Larry (2007). Politics: An Introduction to the Modern Democratic State. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 1-4426-0040-3. 
• Johnston, Larry (2011). Politics: An Introduction to the Modern Democratic State. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 1-4426-0533-2. 

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