‘A conservative is a man who believes that nothing should be done for the first time ' . It is with these words that Alfred Wiggam describes the conservative ideology. This prevalent negative perception of conservatism explains that not many European parties claim themselves as conservatives. Nonetheless, we cannot deny that this term is very common in political analysis to qualify a party by referring to its main ideas. In almost every European country, one party is perceived as more or less representative of this trend.
But what exactly qualifies a party as conservative? To what extent do European conservative parties share a common ideology? I will focus particularly on three states for which, at least, one party is rated as conservative:
[...] This party is the major French right-wing party, and also originates from the main conservative strands: the Gaullist tradition, which can be seen as a democratic resurgence of Bonapartism[6]. Gaullism has taken a number of different names during the post-World War II period : RPF, UNR, UDR, RPR and finally UMP in 2002. It has still played an important part in French politics and, usually, claimed their fidelity to the conception of politics as defined by De Gaulle. It is definitively right justified since the 1970's. The UMP is a composite party congregating the old right and centre-right parties. [...]
[...] In Italy, Berlusconi was pro “devoluzione” (demanded by the ally: Lega Nord) and FI is defined as a party national but not centralizer, more federalist as it is written in the ‘Carta dei valori' (charter of values). The German CDU/CSU is updating its federalism to transfer more power to Landers. The way they govern also reveals a lot. CDU/CSU is very used to governing in wide coalition, while this is unlikely in France as a voluntary choice (cohabitation is not a real choice). [...]
[...] However, their democratic commitment and their, sometimes confusing, pragmatism faced with established ideologies enabled them to widen their electorate in the late 20th century. This is why we can describe them nowadays as catching-all parties[9] in which the leader figure is quite important. All three of these parties are members of the European People's Party, pooling all Christian-democrat-conservative parties together. Religion: an ambivalent behavior. Their links with religion are quite important even if they do not make them their main feature. [...]
[...] These three parties are members of the European People's Party, which, on Chirac's appeal in 2001, removed all references about the United States of Europe. Concerning Turkey, CDU is absolutely opposed to its entry into the European Union, and the French UMP promised a referendum, giving the choice to the electorate. As a conclusion, we can say that these three conservative parties share, to a large extent, a commitment for the same main principles in ruling the political life. Overall, they gather together the same electorate by making campaigns on quite similar problems. [...]
[...] First of all, we can note that FI and the UMP (as a Gaullist movement) have been created from one leader's charisma: De Gaulle and Berlusconi, who argued for a fresh start in politics and definitively acted on their national politics. The CDU did not have such a providential political man's hold upon politics even if Adenauer was an important figure. First, probably because it is a party born immediately after Hitler's era, so the party was quite suspicious of the charismatic authoritarian leader, and because it did not go through a political mistrust period, such as the crisis in Italy. [...]
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