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From the mid‐nineteenth century, conservatism found itself in acute competition with the rising ideologies of the left, liberalism, and then socialism. By the end of that century, the struggle was one of political survival on the institutional level, though the late nineteenth century provides an excellent example of the ill‐fitting relationship between party and ideology. This chapter starts by looking at the multiple counter‐defences of British conservatism, in which it is commonplace to discern a dual British conservative tradition (an older paternalist Tory tradition and a newer anti‐statist stand) from the end of the nineteenth century. It then goes on to examine the cases against socialism, the parrying of liberal advances, Hugh Cecil's book Conservatism, and American conservatism. Lastly, it reappraises libertarianism, and discusses conservatism and public debate.

The strong revival of conservatism in the 1980s, both as a governmental force and as a body of political thought, is frequently portrayed as a flowering of beliefs and attitudes attached to new theoretical frameworks, meriting the designation New Right or neo‐liberal conservatism, as distinct from plain neo‐conservatism. Those frameworks, it is often asserted, have substantially reformulated conservative doctrine and launched a cohesive set of positive ideas matching progressive ideologies in sophistication and breadth. The contemporary study of conservatism is thus confronted with two conundrums: is there now in evidence a new type of conservatism, breaking with its past incarnations and embarking on a programme of change so active that it may no longer be conservatism; and moreover, is there an unbridgeable rift between two concurrent conservative creeds, neo‐liberal and traditional? It is argued here that late twentieth‐century conservative thought occupies fundamentally the same semantic field as its predecessors, granted that the cultural constraints within which its network of concepts is decontested have been considerably transformed; consequently, conservatism appears to be attached to an innovatory range of substantive ideas and policies. The five sections of the chapter are: (a) Thatcherism as conservatism; (b) The subservience of economics; (c) ‘Who is the fiercest of them all?’; (d) Recent American conservatisms; and (e) The unity of Thatcherite ideology.

This chapter challenges the prevailing framework that has shaped most of the literature on American conservatism and explores issues that need to be addressed in order to fundamentally rethink the history of American conservatism. Historians differ in their interpretations of the history and evolution of conservatism in contemporary politics. Some emphasized the importance of race in defining conservative objectives and in explaining their electoral appeal, while others objected to claims about Southern Exceptionalism while agreeing on the centrality of a racial backlash. A different cohort of scholars stressed the importance of anticommunism. After analyzing the fragmented nature of the scholarship of conservatism and the challenges encountered by conservatives when dealing with policy change, the chapter examines how conservatism unfolded in a dialectical fashion with liberalism rather than as a replacement of liberalism.

This chapter considers the contributions that the new political history can make to the field of political science. It first examines how political historians have revitalized their field in recent years before discussing three particular aspects of the literature that are essential for beginning an interdisciplinary dialogue between political history and political science: research on the motivations behind the rise of American conservatism, the discovery of the nineteenth-century state, and arguments about the particularities of public policy. The chapter also explores some key issues that need to addressed so that historians can connect with political scientists, such as the history of political economy or the history of liberalism.

In late 1961, Major General Edwin A. Walker represented not just the apparent capitulation of American liberalism to the enemy but also the birth of a new kind of far-right conservatism, which was called “extremism”. Shortly after the end of World War II, American conservatives launched a crusade to reverse the liberal political and social order prevalent since Franklin D. Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933. Libertarianism and anticommunism are the two broad branches of organized conservatism that were considered in the decade after World War II. Democratically based movements, or movement cultures, often pass through four stages. The conservative movement attained each stage of the sequence, and its participants gained confidence in their ability to alter the American landscape. This book argues that in the 1950s conservatives initially created two distinct but overlapping movement cultures. The history of the transformation of American conservatism is shown.

This chapter documents the formation of conservative activist culture in Los Angeles after World War II. It outlines the historic recipe of political, economic, religious, and ethnic factors that made conservatism so powerful in metropolitan Los Angeles, and then examines the formation of conservative female political culture and consciousness. The grassroots right, already in formation at the beginning of the decade, actively contributed to the beliefs, practices, and institutions that would, by 1960, become known as the “conservative movement.” American conservatism was produced through discourse—political rituals, rhetoric, and performances—before it became a movement with a recognizable name. The activist right toiled locally, not only by concentrating their energy in metropolitan venues, but by generating and continually emphasizing ideals about local community decision-making in an age of government centralization at the federal level.

This chapter provides a historical background of American conservatism, considering the evolving interaction between its economic, socio-religious, and security-oriented aspects. American conservatism is different from conservatism in other countries, even those that were the original source of many other American ideas and ideals—the countries of Europe. In many respects, the history of American conservatism has been the working out of certain inherent contradictions and fatal flaws, beginning with the origins of a distinctive and unusual kind of conservatism in eighteenth-century America, through its full development during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to the great debacle of this original conservatism during the Great Depression of the 1930s, to the reinvention and transformation of American conservatism during the Great Stagflation of the 1970s, and finally to the recent collapse of this reinvented conservatism during the Great Recession, which began in 2007 and continues into the 2010s.

This chapter examines how legislators associated with the conservative movement thrived in a congressional process that liberals had helped to create. It first considers how Congress was reformed in the 1970s, focusing on its transition from the committee era to the contemporary era and how the reform coalition of 1958–1974 helped end the committee era. It then compares the contemporary Congress to the committee-era Congress and how the new legislative process contributed to the fortunes of the conservative movement. It also discusses the decentralization and centralization fostered by congressional reforms, the creation of the Conservative Opportunity Society in 1983 by young mavericks in the Republican Party, congressional conservatives' disappointment with the presidency of George H. W. Bush, and the Republican congressional reforms of 1995. The chapter argues that the state endured despite the political success of American conservatism in Congress.

This chapter draws a distinction between constitutional conservatism and American conservatism. From the foregoing, it is apparent that major variants of post-World War II American conservatism were never entirely satisfied with American constitutionalism at the level of principle, and certainly not with its trajectory since the dawn of Progressivism and the victory of the New Deal. Additionally, conservatives continue routinely to disagree about the meaning of American principles and history, and heatedly to debate issues such as abortion, foreign affairs, and the proper extent of economic regulation. Yet, despite these tensions, conservatives also have consistently recognized that their opposition to modern liberalism required compromise and cooperation with one another.

This chapter examines how conservatives have come to embrace presidential power after an initial wariness. Before the 1970s, there were some conservative activists skeptical of—if not downright hostile toward—presidential power. A key turning point was the 1970s, when many conservatives believed that the congressional reforms that were passed in the aftermath of Watergate weakened the power of the executive branch and were a symbol of what went wrong as a result of the 1960s. The chapter first considers how the conservatives began to accept presidential power during the presidency of Richard Nixon between 1969 and 1974 before discussing congressional reforms in the area of national security. It also discusses the use of executive power under Ronald Reagan, who strengthened the marriage between American conservatism and presidential power; Bill Clinton; and George W. Bush, who expanded presidential power in his war on terrorism.

This introductory chapter provides an outline of the book’s rationale. This book begins with an extended conversation that seeks to delineate key aspects of “American conservatism” and its differences from both “American liberalism” and “conservatism” as practiced elsewhere. Moreover, it examines the controversies about the relationship of church and state. It then turns to a more explicit consideration of the relationship among self-described conservatives within the American legal order, including the U.S. Constitution. Finally, the book looks at two important figures within the history of post-World War II American conservatism: William F. Buckley and Leo Strauss—with three essays focusing particularly on Strauss.

This chapter comments on the previous chapter, arguing that Sidorsky’s analysis of conservatism leaves a sense that American conservatism is not conservatism at all, but rather a part of Louis Hartz’s American liberalism. Liberalism as a political philosophy is definitionally anti-conservative. Liberalism views society as voluntarist, and hence regards with suspicion any claims to political legitimacy based upon tradition, religion, hierarchy, or custom. Indeed, it could be argued that liberalism seeks to eliminate “givenness,” or what it regards as arbitrariness, as a constitutive feature of human life, both politically and personally. By contrast, conservatism understands that certain fundamental aspects of life are given, and counsels a degree of acceptance, gratitude, duty, and obligation.

This chapter examines how the conservative movement redefined and championed centrism by capitalizing on President Jimmy Carter's political struggles caused by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980. The Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan seemed to confirm everything that conservatives had been saying about Carter, his national security policies, and the weakness of the Democratic Party. It ended a decade-long quest among Democrats and moderate Republicans for a centrist national security agency. The chapter considers Carter's human rights initiatives and his contentious relationship with conservatives on issues such as the Panama Canal. It argues that Soviet aggression in Somalia and Afghanistan undermined Carter's ability to deliver on the promise of détente and that the defeat of the center in national security politics during the 1970s was a watershed moment in the history of modern American conservatism.

This chapter determines Leo Strauss’s own stance toward American conservative thought and politics. Strauss addresses American conservatism most explicitly and extensively in his preface to Liberalism, Ancient and Modern. He notes that liberalism and conservatism have a common basis in liberal democracy and therefore share an antagonism to Communism. Elsewhere in that book, Strauss affirms that the most important concern for political scientists in his time would not be the opposition between liberalism and conservatism but “the qualitative difference which amounts to a conflict, between liberal democracy and Communism.” Nonetheless, he discerns a profound difference between liberal and conservative opposition to Communism. The chapter then studies the possible implications of his thought for American conservative thought and politics.