Conservatism Between Tradition and Radicalism

The aim of this thesis is to study from a theoretical point of view the core and main changes of conservatism and its doctrine by analysing how this has developed during time in two countries: Great Britain and Romania. This study comes as a reaction of curiosity aimed to be yielded academically. After the events of 2013 in Great Britain when the activists from the Conservative Party put pressure on the Prime Minister David Cameron to extend the immigration controls on the citizens of Romania and Bulgaria living and working in UK. As at the end of December 2013 the controls barring most Romanians and Bulgarians working in UK were to expire, the chairman of the constituency parties along with the activists from the Conservative Party, urged David Cameron to extend the ban based on a provision from the EU law. This provision allows the extension of the ban against new member states in order to prevent those citizens to come and work in another EU country if this may cause serious disturbances on the labour market. Consequently, this ban is an act against the free movement of labour, one of the central pillars of EU and the European single market. As EU allows temporary restrictions on new member states in order to prevent mass immigration due to better economic benefits, under the EU law these are considered transitional controls and can only last up to seven years just like in the case of Great Britain and the ban over Romanian and Bulgarian citizens, taken into consideration that both countries joined EU in 2007 and the restriction to work in UK was to expire on the 31st of December 2013 at midnight. As a Romanian national myself, living and studying political science in Finland I have found this matter as a crucial subject to analyse from an academic and political theory point of view. My method of analysing the subject is purely theoretical and I provide a unique approach by just comparing how conservatism is portrayed by its thinkers in Great Britain with the one in Romania, having as main focus the changes the doctrine in both countries suffered along time, or how it actually adapted to modern times in order to survive as ideology put in practice. Needless to say why I have chosen to analyse the conservative thought of Great Britain, considering that this is the country where it was born, but of more importance is why this comparison is done with Romania, a country where nowadays there is no conservative party as such. As time frame I have chosen for Great Britain the 18th and 19th centuries and for Romania, as the conservative thought developed later, the second half of the 19th century up to 1921. Between 1880 and 1925 Romania went through numerous and fast changes. The country suffered modifications not only in terms of territorial extent and population, but also experienced deep alterations in its internal structures. However, the conservatives were not able to keep pace with the rate of change, and they struggled to direct the process of change according to their own doctrine and ideas. Nevertheless, the solutions they provided were not so appealing and comprehensive in order to attract a great number of people. Therefore, the main reason for the vanishing of the conservatives from the political scene is not only their particular reluctance to change, but especially the social and political context which was in such a manner that it did not allow them to develop and to go further with their traditional ideals. In Romania after 1921 the conservative party only survived with its name but no practical conservative approach as it did not manage to adapt to modern times and attract supporters. The method used consists of an analysis of the major works that define the conservative doctrine. Moreover, an analytical approach is also used to make the difference between theory and practice-especially for the Romanian case