Progressive conservatism

Progressive conservatism is a syncretic political ideology that attempts to combine conservative and progressive policies. While still supportive of a market economy, it stresses the importance of government intervention to contribute to the common good.

Progressive conservatism first arose in Germany and the United Kingdom in the 1870s and 1880s under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli respectively. Disraeli's 'One Nation' Toryism has since become the central progressive conservative tradition in the UK.

In the UK, the Prime Ministers Disraeli, Stanley Baldwin, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan, David Cameron and Theresa May have been described as progressive conservatives. The Catholic Church's Rerum Novarum (1891) is said to advocate a progressive conservative doctrine known as social Catholicism.

In the United States, Theodore Roosevelt has been the principal figure identified with progressive conservatism as a political tradition. Roosevelt regarded the Republican Party under Abraham Lincoln as having been a progressive conservative party, declaring in 1908 that his business had been to "take hold of the conservative party and turn it into what it had been under Lincoln, that is, a party of progressive conservatism, or conservative radicalism; for of course wise radicalism and wise conservatism go hand in hand."

Roosevelt's successor William Howard Taft has also been associated with progressive conservatism, together with future presidents Dwight David Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.

After World War II, Germany adopted its social market economy, establishing a regulated market economy different to classic free market economies. This economic system was implemented under the first post-war chancellor Konrad Adenauer of the Christian Democratic Union (cf. Christian democracy).

Various European leaders such as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel have also aligned themselves with progressive conservative politics. In some countries, such as South Korea, the main conservative camp may sometimes be more progressive on immigration than the centre-left camp.