NTA UGC/NET/SET/JRF Political Science Paper 2 - 2024, 2nd Edition, Includes 2023 Solved Papers

CHAPTER 2

Conservatism

INTRODUCTION

Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand used this term for the first time in 1818, during the Bourbon Restoration, to counter the momentum of French Revolution. As a political ideology, conservatism represents a thought which desire to conserve the establish institution and political system and always is very skeptical about the changes. According to Michael Oakeshott, “To be conservative…is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded and, the near to the distant”. Conservatism takes its inspiration from Hobbesian human state of nature. Historically, it is associated with right wing politics. It supports for tradition, ...