CONCLUSIONS
The general expansion of the political spectrum to
the
“left” has had the result that many ideas and con-
ceptions of social order and governmental
organization
that were initially promoted by liberal forces have not
only found their way into conservatism, but themselves
appear comparatively
conservative. While liberal
party politics in contemporary Europe is only
very
sluggishly active, conservatism has manifested itself as
a stable
counterweight to socialism; this has, however,
been attained by a
substantial surrender of its ideologi-
cal
substance. It has even been able to absorb some
features of egalitarian
democracy. It has come to an
accommodation with representative democracy
most
readily in the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian countries.
In
Catholic countries it has not really appeared inde-
pendently in political parties, but has animated the
conservative clerical wing of Catholic People's parties.
In the countries
of the European continent, those with
moderate conservative outlooks vote
mostly for Chris-
tian Democratic parties
(Italy, Germany, Austria,
Belgium, Netherlands).
A special role has been played by de Gaullism, which
has displayed features
of the Bonapartism of the nine-
teenth and
the nationalist presidential system of the
twentieth century. Its success
may be ascribed to the
crisis of the parliamentary system and to national
self-
consciousness in France.
In the 1960's when radical critics denigrate even
bourgeois liberals and
social democrats as conserv-
atives, the
conservatives themselves are hardly able
to articulate their position
unequivocally and ration-
ally. It is
doubtful whether they are capable of offering
a convincing alternative to
the democratic welfare
state with its liberal social character. They cannot
halt
the profound and comprehensive social changes which
the modern
world is experiencing. In this process con-
servatism seems to have the task of assuring continuity,
to be a
corrective against progress-at-any-price, and
simply in this way to blunt
reactionary tendencies.
