Postwar Conservatism, A Transnational Investigation: Britain, France, and the United States, 1930-1990

This volume offers a unique comparative perspective on post-war conservatism, as it traces the rise and mutations of conservative ideas in three countries – Britain, France and the United States - across a ‘short’ twentieth century (1929-1990) and examines the reconfiguration of conservatism as a transnational phenomenon. This framework allows for an important and distinctive point --the 1980s were less a conservative revolution than a moment when conservatism, understood in Burkean terms, was outflanked by its various satellites and political avatars, namely, populism, neoliberalism, reaction and cultural and gender traditionalism. No long running, unique ‘conservative mind’ comes out of this book’s transnational investigation. The 1980s did not witness the ascendancy of a movement with deep roots in the 18th century reaction to the French Revolution, but rather the decline of conservatism and the rise of movements and rhetoric that had remained marginal to traditional conservatism.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction.- 2. The Uses and Abuses of the Scottish Enlightenment in Modern Conservatism.- 3. The Theory and Practice of Conservative Propaganda and Organisation in Britain and France in The Interwar Years.- 4. The Long Road of French Neoliberalism.- 5. Principles, markets, and national interest in Conservative approaches to Social Policy.- 6. Taxation, Distribution and Incentives: Conservative Policy in Britain, 1945-1981.- 7. The Institutionalization of Tax Revolt in France and the United States.- 8. French Management Conservatism In Action: The Individualization of Labor Bargaining and Managerial Uses of the Law.- 9. “Thick” States and “Thin” States, In A New Era of Merchant Power.- 10. Transatlantic dimensions of electoral strategy Republican party interpretations of UK politics, 1936–c. 1960.- 11. George Wallace and Enoch Powell: Comparing the Politics of Populist Conservatism in the US and the UK.- 12. ‘Liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt’ : Sexual morality as seen by Supreme Courts in France and the USA

About the Author :
Clarisse Berthezène is an Associate Professor in modern British History at Paris Diderot University, France. She is the author of Training minds for the war of ideas: The Conservative Party, Ashridge College and the cultural politics of Britain, 1929-1954 (2015). Jean-Christian Vinel is an Associate Professor of American History at the Paris Diderot University, France. A political and labor historian, he is the author of The Employee: A Political History (2013).