Conservative Party Research Articles

Piers Legh. The Conservative Party and the Destruction of Selective Education in Post-War Britain: The Great Evasion London: Bloomsbury, 2023. Pp. 256. $115.00 (cloth).

Piers Legh. The Conservative Party and the Destruction of Selective Education in Post-War Britain: The Great Evasion London: Bloomsbury, 2023. Pp. 256. $115.00 (cloth).

Institutions or ideology? Cross-party and cross-country analysis of factors contributing to the election of women to the European Parliament

Abstract The article examines the key factors influencing women’s electoral success in European Parliament (EP) elections. We present a new conceptual approach and a novel model that simultaneously incorporates trends in party characteristics, institutional and socio-economic factors and cross-country trends in women’s representation. The model provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationships between party-level and Member State-level factors and the election of women to the EP. The study is based on an original dataset of 450 observations on national political parties from all Member States, spanning four European elections from 2004 to 2019. Our results show that party characteristics such as incumbency rates, party size and ideological orientations (i.e. the party’s position on the GAL-TAN scale or its attitude towards European integration) play a key role in shaping women’s representation. This article provides novel insights into the unique features of Central and Eastern Europe, elucidating divergent patterns of women’s electoral prospects in conservative and progressive parties in Western democracies and Central and Eastern European post-communist EU Member States.

My Body, My Choice? Examining the Distinct Profiles Underlying Attitudes Toward Abortion and COVID-19 Mandates

AbstractProtestors recently repurposed the abortion rights’ mantra, “my body, my choice,” to oppose COVID-19 mandates. But do those who oppose public health mandates fully support the right to choose? We answer this question by using exploratory analyses to identify the unique response patterns underlying support for abortion and COVID-19 mandates in random samples from the United States (Study 1; N = 2,331) and New Zealand (Study 2; N = 33,310). Latent profile analyses revealed a small subgroup in both countries (12.6% and 3.4% of the respective samples) who opposed mandates. Yet contrary to the “my body, my choice” rhetoric seen at anti-mandate protests, they also opposed abortion. Across both studies, those in the Anti-Mandate profile tended to be more religious, conservative, and distrustful of institutions. In Study 2, they were also low on cognitive consistency and high on conspiracy belief. Finally, the Anti-Mandate profile was opposed to free speech critical of both the United States and religion (Study 1), high on sexual prejudice (both studies), unsupportive of progressive protests (but supportive of reactionary protests; Study 2), and likely to vote for conservative parties (both studies). These results reveal the mobilization potential of the anti-mandate movement, uncover important contradictions within its members, and illustrate the nuanced ways in which opposition to gender policies (i.e., reproductive rights) coalesce with reactionary protests.

Saraiva, Cotegipe e a lei dos sexagenários

The present article aims at analyzing the illustrations of the nineteenth century illustrated press from Rio de Janeiro that approached the management of two Presidents of the Council of Ministers of the empire of Brazil. The first one, José Antônio Saraiva, a politician linked to the Liberal Party, ruled between the months of May and August of 1885. The second, his successor, João Maurício Wanderley, the Baron of Cotegipe, of the Conservative Party, holder of the position between August 1885 and March 1888. The research was carried out in two journals: O Mequetrefe and the Revista Illustrada, which approach the presidencies based on the production of humorous images and criticisms, notably about the Law of the Sexagenarians.

Two worlds, one nation? Comparing the political spaces of Flanders and Francophone Belgium

Abstract The transformation of the Belgian party system has unfolded asymmetrically: while conservative and far-right parties have thrived in Flanders, the populist right vote has not (yet) been mobilized in Francophone Belgium. Focusing on the demand side of electoral politics, this article explores whether these disparities on the supply side mirror distinct political dimensions and cleavages in both regions. By using an innovative methodology of (class-specific) multiple correspondence analysis, we find that the Flemish and the Francophone political space are largely alike – both in terms of the composition of their political dimensions as in their cleavage structure. However, we also find that Francophones adhere to a distinctive welfare consensus, which prevents working-class embourgeoisement and likely moderates the electoral fortunes of the far right. Overall, our results challenge the common stereotypes of a ‘conservative Flanders’ and a ‘progressive Wallonia’.

Taking Alberta Back: Faith, Fuel, and Freedom on the Canadian Far Right

Alberta, Canada is both a major extractive zone—home to the world’s third largest proven oil reserves, mostly in the form of oil sands located in the north of the province—and a place whose political culture has been profoundly influenced by evangelical Christianity. It is both “petro province” and “God’s province”. Despite these distinct political economic and socio-cultural features, relatively little scholarly attention has been given to the contemporary relationships among them. To explore this, we profile the populist far-right social movement organization Take Back Alberta (TBA), which, by channeling the interlocking “freedom” and separatist movements into the governing United Conservative Party (UCP), played a pivotal role in Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s rise to power. We ask the following question: what role do religion and a populist defense of the fossil fuel industry (or “extractive populism”) play, both ideologically and organizationally, within TBA? Drawing from TBA-related documents, including websites, podcasts, social media, and speeches, our analysis produces two key findings: first, that TBA deploys a radical, far-right version of extractive populism, which “anchors” the Danielle Smith government, and, second, that evangelical Christianity contributes to this extractive populism organizationally—by impacting TBA’s membership and resource infrastructure—and discursively, by influencing the collective action frames utilized by TBA leaders in advocating for the interests of the fossil fuel industry.

‘Nesting Dragon, Soldier, Spy’: Shaping the Narrative on China Through Huawei in UK Parliamentary Debates

ABSTRACT This article examines the controversy surrounding 5G in the United Kingdom preceding the decision to remove Huawei from the UK network. We analyse UK parliamentary debates from 2012–2020 against the backdrop of tensions between the United States and China in the race for global leadership in 5G technology. We identify four principal themes in the UK parliamentary discourse: Huawei as innovator and collaborator; a threat to national security; as undermining UK relations with its allies; and embodying opposing values. We argue that the narrative shifts in the UK government’s position towards Huawei correspond to Conservative Party internal conflicts on how to navigate the UK’s relationship with Huawei in response to geopolitical pressures. We situate this changing narrative within a political sinologism that is used to shape a negative view of Huawei and China.

Constructing Disraeli in Twentieth-Century Conservatism

Abstract Since the 1960s, when historians first dethroned the dominant view of Benjamin Disraeli as a Tory democrat and social reformer, his association with an interventionist, socially inclusive Conservatism has largely been considered an exercise in political myth-making. This focus on the Disraeli ‘myth’ has tended to obscure the myriad and substantive ways in which Disraeli’s life and works were interpreted and put to work in Conservative ideological debates and political practice in the twentieth century, reducing them to social policy and state intervention in the economy and overlooking the lineages of his political career in Conservative political economy debates, conceptions of the nation and the constitution, and imperial and foreign policy thinking. This article examines interpretations of Disraeli, and how his legacy was constructed, by conservative biographers, historians and public intellectuals from the decades after his death until the historiography of the 1960s. It traces how Disraeli was memorialised and celebrated in the Conservative movement and popular culture; how his life and works were interpreted for popular audiences by an important group of conservative historians in the inter-war period; and how Disraeli was mobilised in Conservative and Unionist Party debates on tariff reform, social reform, the nation and empire, concluding in the aftermath of the Second World War, when his legacy and statecraft were consistently evoked in Conservative debates on post-war Britain. It demonstrates that Disraeli was interpreted in much more diverse ways, and with more diverse political objectives, than the standard readings of the Disraelian tradition have hitherto appreciated.

Narrativizing power in times of (many) crises: the case of British conservative leaders

ABSTRACT Before their 2024 bruising defeat, the Conservative Party had been in power for more than a decade, during which it had to deal with many exogeneous and endogenous crises. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have yet managed to win three general elections, making unprecedented gains in 2019. We argue that communication and leadership were key in establishing power relations and, within the theoretical framework of Seeger and Sellnow’s “crisis narratives” and Boin and t’Hart’s “Public leadership in times of crisis”, we propose to analyse critically the main narratives that Conservative Prime Ministers have dwelt on to secure their hold on power.

A Survey of Climate Change Law in the United Kingdom

Abstract A detailed summative statement of the law of climate change in the United Kingdom has yet to be brought together in the legal literature. This article fills the gap by drawing UK climate change law together into an article-length outline. The law is current to 4 July 2024, when the British Conservative Party, which had been in government for fourteen consecutive years, lost to Labour in a general election.

Sir William Burrell: An Artful Politician

This article discusses the political career of Sir William Burrell (1861–1958) as a Conservative party councillor for Glasgow's Exchange ward (1899–1906) and focuses on the years 1899–1901, in three overlapping arenas: the 1899 municipal elections in which Burrell began his career; Glasgow's civic and business status as the second city of the British empire; and the 1901 international exhibition. By examining Burrell as a skilful operator in all three contexts simultaneously, this article presents him for the first time not only as a powerful Glaswegian businessman who collected art, but also as an adroit politician who exploited both his business success and his curatorial expertise for the benefit of the Conservative and Liberal Unionist cause in the city. His administration and curation of the international exhibition in the new Kelvingrove galleries allowed the dominant Unionist group to present itself to millions of visitors. Burrell's art collection is thus demonstrated to be an important political source.

Norman Gash: Political Historian

AbstractThis article commemorates the 40th anniversary of the publication of Lord Liverpool by Norman Gash (1912–2009). It considers Gash as a historian who both wrote about 19th‐century politics and expressed political views of his own. These views became increasingly prominent in the 1980s, during Margaret Thatcher's period of office. Thatcher's unexpected public endorsement of Lord Liverpool was reflected in Gash's open support for Thatcher's economic policies in the face of internal party critics, including those who appealed to the legacy of Benjamin Disraeli. Far from being uncomfortable about Thatcher's radicalism, as is sometimes argued, Gash used a series of newspaper interventions to accommodate Thatcherism within Conservative Party history. This drew favourable analogies between Thatcher and Liverpool, but more especially with Sir Robert Peel. Gash did not abandon academic scholarship for public commentary during the 1980s, but at no period in his life was he as willing to join in contemporary political debate as the years in which he was writing and researching Lord Liverpool.

Neoliberalism, left behind Middlesbrough and levelling up: an intractable policy task?

ABSTRACT Proposing to narrow spatial inequalities in one of the most unbalanced economies in the developed world, the Levelling Up agenda was a key driving force behind the Conservative Party obtaining their largest majority since 1987 at the 2019 general election. The agenda, though, has been beset by various problems and has all but fallen by the political wayside. One key problem was that it lacked a political economic understanding of left behind places, especially Northern post-industrial locales that were lagging particularly due to deindustrialisation under neoliberalism. Many of these post-industrial places have endured persistent deprivation and entrenched social problems for around four decades. This paper is structured as follows. It begins by exploring UK neoliberalism, before briefly discussing the emergence of left behind places and the Levelling Up agenda. Focussing on the experiences of left behind Middlesbrough, in Teesside, UK, the article explores the area’s rise in light of the iron, steel and petrochemicals industries and its decline particularly in the neoliberal era. As the town’s demise is intimately connected to neoliberalism, the paper closes by discussing why it is highly unlikely left behind places such as Middlesbrough will be revived under the UK’s current form of capitalism.

On the (Im)possible Relation Between the Universal and the Relative: The Aporia of Community

Abstract ‘British values’ have recently been invoked by the Right in Britain – both in the Conservative Party and outside by the Reform Party led by the Right insurgent and public school educated (Dulwich College) ‘man of the people’ Nigel Farage. Such values are directed at communities of colour, as well as those communities that stand apart from the logic of ‘phallologentricism’. Factions of the secular Left too have engaged in an iteration of ‘culture wars’ by targeting Jewish communities who may not share Hamas’s desire to eradicate Israel in favour of a monistic Palestinian State. At the heart of these contested cultural terrains is an overarching issue: namely, the question of the universal, and how the universal informs the States’ politics of representation (the “General Will”, the “nation”, “citizen” etc…). Derrida reminds us that “the social” – let alone the State and the polity it brings to life – can never be reduced to a single meaning, that the nature of community will always be subject to contestation contra the telos of monism.

Planning and party manifestos in recent UK general elections

In a democracy, a commonly held idea is that political parties present their programmes for government before elections so that people know what they are voting for. It is then often held that governments should follow what they have said, when in government. These programmes may take several forms, but the most common one is the party manifesto. Here the aim is to consider how planning elements have figured in manifestos. Manifestos are surveyed from the four UK general elections 2010–2019, concentrating on those of the Conservative and Labour parties. How far did planning figure in manifestos? Were there big differences between parties and elections? To what extent did a winning party follow its manifesto? Manifestos tread a complicated line between clear ideological statements and more immediately tuned electoral political considerations. Some implications are drawn out for how planning actors may relate to manifestos in the future.

Inside the ‘secret garden’: Candidate selection at the 2019 UK general election

Candidate selections are seen as the ‘secret garden’ of UK politics. Hundreds of parliamentary constituencies rarely change hands, meaning that the ‘real election’ is the incumbent party’s selection process. Yet scholarship into candidate selection in the United Kingdom remains limited. In this article, we build a novel dataset of known shortlisted candidates in winnable seats to offer the first cross-party analysis of who gets shortlisted, and what factors influence success among shortlisted candidates. We find that shortlisted female and ethnic minority candidates are still less likely to be selected as parliamentary candidates, while living locally is by far the most significant factor affecting selection success. However, the nature of the 2019 snap election allowed parties to use emergency powers to advantage party insiders in late selections. We further find that, contrary to media focus, party faction was not a significant factor in Conservative or Labour Party selections.

Liberal or Conservative? Analysing the Legacy of Abe's Women's Advancement Policy

Prime Minister Abe’s bold policy proposals focused on women attracted significant attention and various responses. However, going back to the fundamentals, LDP is a conservative political party, and Abe himself identifies as a conservative. During the backlash era, he attacked gender equality and emphasised traditional family values and patriotism. This paper reexamines the implications of the women's policies implemented under his leadership from a gender perspective. It sheds light on the deeply entrenched and complex gender inequality regimes that prevail in Japanese society. It becomes evident that Abe's administration carefully avoided any explicit reference to gender equality, skilfully incorporating recommendations such as promoting three-generation households, while consistently depicting women as operating under the guidance of men, signifying that the government's underlying “traditional” values had not changed. Women's Advancement policy, in essence, implies the deep entrenchment of a Japanese-style patriarchal, vertical society made up of political parties, administration, corporations, and society at large, where women are granted opportunities to succeed through assimilation into a gendered world involving subordination to men.

Is there a rural-urban political divide in Britain?

ABSTRACT A rural-urban political divide, characterized by rural mistrust in politics, dissatisfaction with democracy, and support for authoritarian-populist leaders and parties, has been identified in many Western democracies. Yet there has been little investigation of the extent to which British public opinion is divided in this fashion. Using British Election Study data from 2016 and 2019 that combines large samples with finely-grained geographic identifiers, this paper investigates the possible presence and extent of a rural-urban divide in British political attitudes and values. We find that while rural Britons are more conservative on economic issues, and more supportive of the Conservative party than urbanites, the two groups have comparable levels of democratic satisfaction, political trust, and authoritarianism. As such, unlike in other Western democracies, we do not find any evidence that rural Britons are more resentful, dissatisfied, or “left-behind” compared to their urban counterparts.

Instability, crisis, and statecraft in Conservative Britain, 2010–24

Abstract This article examines how the Conservative Party dominated British politics from 2010 to 2024 despite this period being one of instability and crisis. It argues that a key source of this turmoil was the Conservative Party itself, which under a succession of Prime Ministers struggled to formulate an effective statecraft strategy. While these leadership failings have been well documented the underlying difficulties run deeper, reflecting tensions for the self-proclaimed natural party of government in adapting its statecraft to the rise of populist and anti-politics pressures. The article exposes these through the lens of statecraft theory, which is applied to the largely overlooked constitutional dimension of Conservative statecraft. This reveals a persistent willingness to prioritize partisan statecraft strategy over adherence to constitutional norms, which portends a slide into populism now the party has returned to opposition.

From Gender Gap to Gender Gaps: Bringing Nonbinary People into Political Behavior Research

The “gender gap” in voting is one of the most well-documented findings in survey research across democracies. However, gender gap research has traditionally assumed that everyone is either a man or a woman, which does not account for the growing number of people who identify as nonbinary. How do nonbinary people differ from men and women in their party identification and voting behavior? We answer this question using data from the 2021 Canadian Election Study online panel, which has a large enough subsample of nonbinary respondents to identify gaps in party identification and voting behavior. Nonbinary people are much less likely to identify with and vote for the Liberal Party or Conservative Party and much more likely to identify with and vote for the social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) than both men and women. Many of these gaps persist even when restricting the analysis to LGBTQ respondents, adjusting for demographic variables that predict nonbinary identity, and adjusting for issue attitudes. Nonbinary people’s distinctiveness from men and women suggests that researchers need to add nonbinary response options to gender questions and, wherever possible, incorporate nonbinary people into analyses of gender and politics.