amazon.co.ukConservatism: Traditional and New Right
A* revision of conservatism for AQA 7152 (Paper 3) and Edexcel 9PL0 (Paper 1 core political ideas): traditional, One-Nation and New Right strands, Hobbes to Nozick, and the tensions examiners reward.
🎯 Learning Objectives
- State the core themes of conservatism - pragmatism, tradition, human imperfection, organic society, paternalism, property (AQA 3.3.2; Edexcel 9PL0 core political ideas) - with thinker anchors (AO1).
- Distinguish traditional/One-Nation conservatism from the New Right, citing Hobbes, Burke, Oakeshott, Rand and Nozick (AO1/AO2).
- Explain the two halves of the New Right (neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism) and the internal tension between them (AO2).
- Analyse tensions over change, the state, society and the economy, and judge how far conservatism is a coherent ideology (AO2/AO3).
- Apply conservatism in practice: Thatcherism's rolling back of the state and the One-Nation post-war consensus (AO2).
- Construct balanced essay arguments with substantiated judgements that meet AQA 25-mark and Edexcel 30-mark criteria (AO3).
📋 Key Definitions and Core Concepts
Pragmatism: Politics as practical problem-solving guided by circumstance and experience, not fixed theory or abstract dogma (Oakeshott).
Tradition: The accumulated wisdom of past institutions and practices; customs bind the generations, provide stability and legitimate hierarchy (Burke).
Human imperfection: Humans are limited psychologically (they crave security), morally (flawed and needing order) and intellectually (unable to redesign society from first principles) (Hobbes, Burke, Oakeshott).
Organic society: Society as a living body whose parts - families, classes, institutions - are interdependent; individuals owe duties as well as rights.
Paternalism: The state should care for the weak as a father cares for his family ('noblesse oblige'); the One-Nation justification for welfare from above.
Atomistic individualism: The New Right view that society is merely a collection of self-reliant individuals bound by little beyond contract and self-interest (Rand, Nozick).
Self-ownership: Individuals own their bodies, talents and labour; redistributive taxation violates this property in the self (Nozick).
Objectivism: Rand's philosophy: rational self-interest is the highest moral virtue, altruism is a vice, and laissez-faire capitalism is the only moral social order.
Neo-liberalism: The New Right's economics: free markets, privatisation, deregulation, low direct taxation and monetarism; rolling back the state (Rand, Nozick; Thatcherism/Reaganism).
Neo-conservatism: The New Right's social policy: tough law and order, traditional morality and family values, strong defence and national sovereignty; rolling forward the penal state.
Little platoons: Burke's term for the intermediate institutions - family, church, locality - that attach individuals to society and buffer them from the state.
📌 Key Points
Shared ground of all conservatives: property, order, tradition broadly defined, human imperfection, and incremental reform ('change to conserve').
Traditional/One-Nation strand (Hobbes, Burke, Oakeshott): paternalism, organic society, pragmatism, acceptance of the post-war welfare settlement.
New Right combines neo-liberal economics (Rand, Nozick) with neo-conservative social policy; its society is atomistic, not organic.
Sharpest tension: organic paternalism vs atomistic self-ownership - welfare as duty vs welfare as 'forced labour'.
The New Right looks ideological, breaching Oakeshott's pragmatism - but its defenders call it pragmatism responding to the 1970s crisis.
Core themes of conservatism (AQA 7152 3.3.2; Edexcel 9PL0 core political ideas)
Both specs fix the same themes: pragmatism, tradition, human imperfection, organic society, paternalism and property. Examiners reward theme-plus-thinker anchoring - never describe a theme without attaching a named conservative.
| Theme | What conservatives claim | Thinker anchor |
|---|---|---|
| Pragmatism | Change by circumstance and experience, not blueprint or ideology | Oakeshott ('keeping afloat') |
| Tradition | Past institutions embody tested wisdom; 'change to conserve' | Burke (Reflections, 1790) |
| Human imperfection | Psychological, moral and intellectual limits make utopian redesign dangerous | Hobbes (order out of fear); Oakeshott (improvisation) |
| Organic society | Society is a living body; interdependence generates duties, not just rights | Burke (little platoons) |
| Paternalism | The privileged owe care to the weak ('noblesse oblige'); welfare is a duty, not a right | One-Nation tradition (Disraeli's 'two nations' context) |
| Property | Property gives independence, security and is an extension of personality; inherited property binds the generations | Burke; New Right (absolute property rights) |
Property deserves separate attention because it spans all strands: traditionalists prize it for continuity and independence; the New Right treats property rights as near-absolute. It also explains conservatism's pro-ownership politics - from landlord rights to the right-to-buy policy (Housing Act 1980).
Also note the spec's reference to libertarianism and the economy: it sits at the New Right end of the theme list, and examiners expect you to place it - libertarianism contradicts paternalism and the organic society, belonging with Rand and Nozick, not with Burke and Oakeshott.
Traditional conservatism and One-Nation: Hobbes, Burke, Oakeshott
Hobbes anchors order and human imperfection (Leviathan, 1651). The state of nature is a war 'of every man against every man'; life there is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short'. Rational individuals contract to an absolute sovereign for order and security. Humans are morally and intellectually imperfect - self-interest and fear dominate - so overwhelming authority, not liberty, is the priority. There is no right of rebellion: unlike Locke's conditional contract, Hobbes' sovereign cannot legitimately be resisted.
Human imperfection has three examinable forms: psychological (humans crave security and belonging), moral (self-interest and appetite require discipline by institutions) and intellectual (no generation can redesign society from first principles). Each form grounds a different conservative claim: psychological imperfection justifies strong authority (Hobbes), moral imperfection justifies paternalism and hierarchy (Burke), intellectual imperfection justifies pragmatism and tradition (Oakeshott). Use the triad to structure 9-marker answers without drifting into biography.
Burke anchors tradition and evolutionary change (Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790). He attacks the French Revolution's abstract rationalism and its attempt to rebuild society from first principles. Society is a partnership between the living, the dead and the unborn: tradition carries tested wisdom no single generation can improve upon. Individuals are rooted in little platoons - family, church, parish - which attach them to society and buffer them from the state. Change is legitimate only to conserve: 'a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation'. Aristocratic paternalism follows: the privileged have a duty of care to the weak.
Oakeshott anchors pragmatism (Rationalism in Politics, 1962). Politics is not the pursuit of a destination but 'keeping afloat' on an open and turbulent sea - the nautical metaphor. The 'rationalist' who imposes a grand blueprint is the conservative's enemy: practical knowledge is embedded in practices and cannot be written down as doctrine. Conservatism is a disposition - to prefer the tried to the untried - not an ideology.
One-Nation conservatism applies these ideas in practice: Disraeli's warning of 'two nations' (the rich and the poor) demanded paternalistic reform to preserve social unity. The post-war Conservative acceptance of the welfare settlement and the mixed economy (the 'Middle Way' associated with Macmillan) is One-Nation pragmatism: welfare from above, as duty, to avert socialism - not welfare as a right.
One-Nation's acceptance of the post-war settlement was pragmatic, not sentimental: the Attlee settlement was kept because dismantling it looked more dangerous than keeping it. Macmillan's The Middle Way (1938) had already made the argument - capitalism tempered by welfare preserves both prosperity and social peace - and the Butler Education Act (1944), passed under a coalition and steered by a Conservative minister, extended state schooling: paternalism enacted, not neoliberalised.
The New Right: neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism (Rand, Nozick)
The New Right emerged in the 1970s from stagflation, union power and a perceived 'crisis' of the overgrown welfare state, and powered Thatcher (1979-90) and Reagan (1981-89). It fuses two strands that are themselves in tension.
Neo-liberalism - the economics of Rand and Nozick. Rand (Atlas Shrugged, 1957; The Virtue of Selfishness, 1964) offers objectivism: rational self-interest is the highest virtue, altruism is a vice, and unregulated laissez-faire capitalism is the only moral order. Her atomistic individualism dissolves the organic society: individuals owe little beyond contract, and state welfare saps self-reliance. Nozick (Anarchy, State and Utopia, 1974) supplies the state theory: self-ownership makes redistributive taxation 'on a par with forced labour'; only the minimal night-watchman state is legitimate. Policy translation: privatisation, deregulation, trade-union reform, low direct taxation and monetarism replacing Keynesian demand management.
Neo-conservatism - the social policy. Permissiveness of the 1960s is blamed for crime and family breakdown, so neo-conservatives demand tough law and order (harsher sentencing, stronger policing), the restoration of traditional family and moral values, and uncompromising national sovereignty and defence. The Thatcher government's record mixes the halves: privatisation and Big Bang deregulation (1986) alongside Section 28 (1988) and the Falklands war (1982).
The internal tension: the neo-liberal free market unleashes the very consumerism and moral permissiveness that neo-conservatism deplores - a minimal economic state sits alongside an activist penal and moral state. The formula 'free economy, strong state' captures the strain: the New Right is an unstable compound, and examiners reward noticing it.
In practice the halves clashed inside the Thatcher government itself: deregulation and consumer credit (neo-liberal) ran alongside a moral campaign for traditional family values (neo-conservative), and monetarist austerity produced the 1981 protest letter from 364 economists - a reminder that New Right economics was contested as well as radical.
Tensions within conservatism: traditional vs New Right (AO2/AO3)
State the tension, cite thinkers on both sides, then judge how far conservatism remains coherent.
- Change: evolutionary pragmatism (Burke, Oakeshott) vs the New Right's radical dismantling of the post-war settlement - 'rolling back' the state looks revolutionary, contradicting 'change to conserve'.
- The state: paternalistic and nurturing (One-Nation) vs minimal and negative (Rand, Nozick); welfare as a duty of the privileged vs welfare as institutionalised theft.
- Society: organic, interdependent, bound by duty (Burke's little platoons) vs atomistic individualism bound only by contract (Rand, Nozick).
- Economy: managed, welfare-accommodating capitalism (One-Nation, Keynesian) vs laissez-faire, monetarist free markets (New Right).
- Human nature: imperfection demanding communal care and state support (traditional) vs rational self-reliance capable of standing on its own (neo-liberal).
Judgement options. The majority judgement: conservatism is best seen as a broad family united by property, order and tradition - but the New Right's ideological zeal arguably breaks the family, since blueprints are precisely what Burke and Oakeshott reject. The alternative: the New Right is pragmatism - a circumstantial response to the 1970s crisis, i.e. 'change to conserve'. Either judgement scores if argued and evidenced; the strongest answers use the internal neo-liberal/neo-conservative split as supporting evidence either way.
One further tension is worth naming: authority vs liberty. Traditional conservatism accepts restrictions on liberty in exchange for order (Hobbes' sovereign), while the New Right's neo-liberal half is libertarian about economic freedom - yet its neo-conservative half is authoritarian about morality. The New Right is therefore simultaneously more libertarian and more authoritarian than the traditional strand - a paradox that makes an excellent essay conclusion.
Conservatism in practice, thinker comparison and essay technique
In practice, Thatcherism tested New Right ideas (privatisation, the miners' strike 1984-85, right to buy), and post-Thatcher leaders reasserted One-Nation themes - paternalism and social unity - showing the family tension live in the party itself.
| Thinker | Key work | Strand | Human nature | Society | State |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hobbes | Leviathan (1651) | Precursor/traditional | Imperfect, fear-driven; self-interested | Contract of self-interest for security | Absolute sovereign; order above liberty |
| Burke | Reflections (1790) | Traditional | Imperfect; bound by custom | Organic; little platoons; partnership of generations | Aristocratic, paternalistic; change to conserve |
| Oakeshott | Rationalism in Politics (1962) | Traditional | Intellectually imperfect; cannot blueprint | Organic, practical, customary | Pragmatic; 'keeping afloat' |
| Rand | Atlas Shrugged (1957) | New Right (neo-liberal) | Rational, self-interested; altruism is a vice | Atomistic; obligation ends at contract | Minimal; laissez-faire only |
| Nozick | Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974) | New Right (neo-liberal) | Self-owning, self-reliant | Atomistic, contractual | Night-watchman only; taxation as forced labour |
Highest-value pairings for essays: Hobbes vs Locke (order vs liberty - shows what conservatism shares and rejects with liberalism), Burke vs Rand (organic vs atomistic society), Oakeshott vs Thatcherism (pragmatism vs ideological blueprint). Each pairing generates a balanced paragraph with a judgement built in.
Exam technique: AQA 9-markers, AQA 25-mark extracts, Edexcel 30-markers
AQA 9-markers need three distinct points, each claim + named thinker + analysis - three marks per point. AQA 25-mark items are extract-based: quote and interrogate the extract, then evaluate with thinkers. Edexcel 30-markers ('To what extent do conservatives agree...') require balanced paragraphs, counter-arguments, a substantiated judgement and at least three key thinkers. Classic trap: writing a Thatcher biography - analyse the ideas (neo-liberalism, neo-conservatism), using Thatcherism only as supporting evidence.
💡 Worked Example
Exam-style: Explain and analyse three ways in which conservative thinkers have viewed human nature. [9 marks] (AQA 7152 Paper 3 style) --- AND --- To what extent do conservatives agree about the role of the state? [30 marks] (Edexcel 9PL0 Paper 1, core political ideas)
Mark-scheme logic: 9-marker: three points, each claim + thinker + analysis. (1) Hobbes - humans are driven by fear and appetite, morally and intellectually imperfect; they need an overwhelming sovereign to escape the war of all against all. (2) Oakeshott - humans are intellectually imperfect and cannot design society from first principles; politics must be pragmatic improvisation guided by tradition. (3) Rand - humans are rational and self-interested; imperfection claims are rejected because state welfare saps self-reliance, so self-ownership demands the minimal state. The 30-marker additionally needs: agreements (order, property, tradition, incremental change, human imperfection broadly); disagreements (paternalistic vs minimal state; organic vs atomistic society; welfare as duty vs welfare as 'forced labour'; Keynesian vs monetarist economics); a substantiated judgement (e.g. the New Right is ideological and breaks with Burkean/Oakeshottian pragmatism - or is pragmatism responding to the 1970s crisis); balanced paragraphs with counter-arguments and dated key works.
❓ Practice Questions & Mark Schemes
Explain and analyse three ways in which conservative thinkers have supported the idea of tradition. [9 marks]
Answer: (1) Burke: tradition is a partnership between the living, the dead and the unborn; institutions embody tested wisdom, so change is legitimate only to conserve. Analysis: tradition is the conservative's alternative to abstract theory. (2) Oakeshott: practical knowledge is embedded in practices and cannot be written as doctrine; the rationalist blueprint is the enemy. Analysis: tradition guides pragmatic improvisation ('keeping afloat'). (3) Traditional paternalism and property: inherited property ties the generations and tradition legitimises hierarchy and duty (little platoons). Analysis: stability and continuity depend on respecting inherited arrangements. Marking: 3 marks per point - claim + thinker + analysis; dated works earn credit.
Explain and analyse three ways in which the ideas of the New Right have influenced conservatism. [9 marks]
Answer: (1) Free-market economics: Rand's objectivism and Nozick's self-ownership underpinned privatisation, deregulation and low taxation under Thatcher and Reagan - monetarism replaced Keynesianism. (2) Atomistic individualism: replaced the organic society - individuals owe little beyond contract; welfare provision was redefined as a threat to self-reliance rather than a paternalistic duty. (3) Neo-conservatism: tough law and order, traditional family values and national sovereignty entered the Conservative programme (Section 28, defence spending) alongside the free-market agenda. Marking: three distinct influences, each with a thinker or policy; analysis must connect idea to conservative practice.
To what extent do conservatives agree about human nature? [30 marks]
Answer: Agreements: humans are imperfect and limited; they crave order and security; property and custom discipline them; utopian redesign is dangerous. Disagreements: psychologically dependent beings needing communal care (traditional) vs self-reliant rational actors (neo-liberal); moral imperfection justifying authority and paternalism (Hobbes, Burke) vs rational self-interest as a virtue (Rand); intellectual imperfection justifying tradition (Oakeshott) vs confidence in market rationality (neo-liberalism). Judgement: the shared vocabulary of imperfection hides a real split - traditionalists infer duty and state care from imperfection, the New Right infers self-reliance and a minimal state; significant but arguable, since the New Right presented itself as restoring self-reliance to an over-dependent society. Structure: agreement, disagreement paragraphs, counter-argument, judgement with criteria.
To what extent is conservatism an ideology rather than a pragmatic disposition? [30 marks]
Answer: Ideology case: the New Right is a coherent doctrine - neo-liberalism (Rand, Nozick) plus neo-conservatism - imposed as a blueprint; its radical rolling back of the post-war settlement contradicts 'change to conserve' and resembles the rationalism Oakeshott attacked. Disposition case: Burke and Oakeshott define conservatism as anti-ideological pragmatism; One-Nation conservatism repeatedly bent with circumstance (accepting the welfare state, the Middle Way); Thatcherism can be read as circumstantial crisis-response. Judgement: both are true at different moments - conservatism is a disposition at its core, but its New Right episode shows the disposition can harden into ideology under pressure; alternatively, argue the New Right proves pragmatism is rhetorical cover for a permanent doctrine. Either conclusion scores if substantiated. Structure: define ideology vs disposition; cases with thinkers; judgement.
To what extent have conservatives supported paternalism? [30 marks]
Answer: Support: One-Nation conservatism (Disraeli's 'two nations') made paternalistic reform a duty of the privileged - noblesse oblige; the post-war acceptance of welfare and the NHS preserved social unity from above; Burke's little platoons and aristocratic duty supply the theory; Hobbesian order justifies strong authority over the vulnerable. Rejection: Rand calls altruism a vice - welfare corrupts both giver and receiver; Nozick's self-ownership makes redistributive taxation 'on a par with forced labour'; neo-liberals argue welfare creates dependency, so the New Right rolled back provision. Judgement: historically conservatives supported paternalism, but the New Right's rejection is the sharpest intra-family break - welfare as duty vs welfare as theft is arguably the fundamental tension in conservatism. Structure: support, reject, judgement with criteria.