The centre-right also referred to as the moderate right, describes adherence to views whose views leaning to the right but close to the centre on the left-right political spectrum. The centre-right involves the acceptance of a degree of hierarchy in society.^[1] The centre right claims that inferior quality behaviour, such as laziness and decadence, will lead people to inferior situations in comparison to others.^[2] The contemporary centre right, unlike the far-right, usually claims that this is not innate and that people can end their behavioural inferiority through changing their habits and choices of behaviour.^[3] There was a shift in attitude of the Western world towards aristocracy from the 1830s to the 1880s, with the decline of influence of aristocracy and the rise of capitalism and the rise of influence of middle-class bourgeoisie.^[4] This general economic shift towards capitalism affected moderate right movements such as the British Conservative Party that responded by shifting away from being supportive of the traditions of aristocracy to being supportive of capitalism.^[5]

The International Democrat Union, an alliance of centrist to centre-right political parties, including the British Conservative Party, the Republican Party of the United States, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, Christian democratic parties, amongst others across the world, is committed to the principles that "democratic societies provide individuals throughout the world with the best conditions for political liberty, personal freedom, equality of opportunity and economic development under the rule of law; and therefore being committed to advancing the social and political values on which democratic societies are founded, including the basic personal freedoms and human rights, as defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; in particular, the right of free speech, organisation, assembly and non-violent dissent; the right to free elections and the freedom to organise effective parliamentary opposition to government; the right to a free and independent media; the right to religious belief; equality before the law; and individual opportunity and prosperity".^[6]

  History

  French Revolution to World War II

The prominent inspiration for the centre-right, especially in Britain, was the traditionalist conservatism of Edmund Burke.^[7] Burke's traditionalist conservatism was more moderate than the continental conservatism developed by Joseph De Maistre in France, that upon experiencing the French Revolution completely denounced the status quo that existed immediately prior to the revolution (unlike Burke) and de Maistre sought a reactionary counter-revolution that would dismantle all modern society and return it to a strictly religious-based society.^[8] While Burke condemned the French Revolution, he had supported the American Revolution that he viewed as being a conservative revolution.^[9] Burke claimed that the Americans revolted for the same reason as the English had during the Glorious Revolution, in both cases a monarch had overstepped the boundaries of his duties.^[10] Burke claimed that the American Revolution was justified because King George III had overstepped his customary rights by imposing taxes on the American colonists without their consent.^[11] Burke opposed the French Revolution because he opposed its anti-traditionalism and its use of abstract ideas, such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and its universal egalitarianism that Burke rebuked by claiming that it effectively endorsed "hairdressers" being able to be politicians.^[12]

In Britain, the traditionalist conservative movement was represented in the British Conservative Party.^[13] Conservative British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli sought to address social problems affecting the working class due to lack of assistance from the laissez-faire economy, and formed his one nation conservatism that claimed that lack of assistance for the lower classes had divided British society into two nations - the rich and the poor as the result of unrestrained private enterprise, he claimed that he sought to break down.^[14] Disraeli said that he supported a united British nation while presenting the other parties representing the upper-class or the lower-class.^[15] Disraeli was hostile to free trade and preferred aristocratic paternalism as well as promoting imperialism.^[16] However with the revival in Britain of the socialist movement with the rise of the Labour Party, and the demise of the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party shifted to become a supporter of capitalism and an opponent of socialism, while advocacy of capitalism was promoted within the principles of traditionalist conservatism.^[17]

Another centre-right movement that arose in France in response to the French Revolution, was the beginning of the Christian democracy movement, where moderate conservative Catholics accepted the democratic elements of the French Revolution.^[18] The first Christian democratic party was founded in Italy in 1919 by Luigi Sturzo, it was suppressed by the Italian Fascist regime and was forced into exile in France.^[19] Sturzo in France founded an international movement that supported the creation of a European common market and European integration to prevent war, amongst those who attended the group included future German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, Alcide de Gasperi, and Robert Schuman.^[20]

  Post-World War II

In Europe after World War II, centre-right Christian democratic parties arose as powerful political movements while the authoritarian reactionary Catholic traditionalist movements in Europe diminished in strength.^[21] Christian democratic movements became major movements in Austria, the Benelux countries, Germany, and Italy.^[22]

Neoliberalism arose as an economic theory by Milton Friedman as a prominent economic movement that condemned government interventionism in the economy that it associated with socialism and collectivism.^[23] Neoliberals rejected Keynesian economics that they claimed advocate too much emphasis on relieving unemployment in response to their observance of the Great Depression, the neoliberals identified the real problem as being with inflation and advocate the policy of monetarism to deal with inflation.^[24]

Neoliberal economics was endorsed by Conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher who adapted it as part of a free-market conservatism closer to the developments in American conservatism, while traditionalist conservatism diminished within the British Conservative Party.^[25] Thatcher publcily supported centre-right politics and supported its spread in Eastern Europe after the end of the Marxist-Leninist regimes in the late 1980s and early 1990s.^[26] After the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, a variety of centre-right political parties have emerged there, including many that support neoliberalism.^[27]

  Gallery

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  Former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, a centre-right member of the British Conservative Party..

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  Former United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a centre-right conservative of the Republican Party.

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  Former Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Satō of the centre-right Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, and Japan's longest serving Prime Minister.

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  German Chancellor Angela Merkel of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union.

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  Nitlin Gadkari, leader of India's centre-right Bharatiya Janata Party.

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  Nana Akufo-Addo, leader of Ghana's centre-right New Patriotic Party.

  See also

• Centrism
• Far-right
• Glossary of the French Revolution
• Ideology
• Right-wing politics

  References