Conservative Liberalism

Conservative liberalism is a variant of liberalism, combining liberal values and policies with conservative stances, or, more simply, representing the right-wing of the liberal movement.

Conservative liberalism is a more positive and less radical version of classical liberalism. Conservative liberal parties combine liberal policies with more traditional stances on social and ethical issues. They are generally supporters of economic liberalism and they often identify themselves as law and order-parties, tougher on crime and, in the era of the so-called War on Terror following the September 11 attacks, more committed against terrorism.

The roots of conservative liberalism are to be found at the beginning of the history of liberalism. Until the two world wars, in most European countries the political class was formed by conservative liberals, from Germany to Italy. The events such as World War I occurring after 1917 brought the more radical version of classical liberalism to a more conservative (i.e. more moderate) type of liberalism. Conservative liberal parties have tended to develop in those European countries where there was no strong secular conservative party and where the separation of church and state was less of an issue. In those countries, where the conservative parties were Christian-democratic, this conservative brand of liberalism developed.

In the European context conservative liberalism should not be confused with liberal conservatism, that is a variant of conservatism combining conservatives views with liberal policies in regard of the economy, social and ethical issues.