Civic conservatism is a form of modern British conservatism developed by the Conservative intellectual David Willetts.
First introduced in his is the idea of focussing on the institutions between the state and individuals as a policy concern (rather than merely thinking of individuals and the state as the only agencies). His 1995 pamphlet, "Civic Conservatism" wished to "place the free market in the context of institutions and values which make up civil society". The examples of these institutions were the "network of voluntary organisations", from hospitals to guilds, which had been "weakened if not destroyed by the advance of the State".
Fourteen years after the publication of "Civic Conservatism" Willetts gave the inaugural Oakeshott Memorial Lecture to the London School of Economics in which he made an attempt to explain how game theory can be used to help think about how to improve social capital. Willetts attempted to use the works of Ken Binmore to explain how such a civic-centred policy could emerge, and in what conditions it would thrive.
"Civic conservatism, like free market economics, proceeds from deep-seated individual self-interest towards a stable cooperation. It sets the Tories the task not of changing humanity but of designing institutions and arrangements that encourage our natural reciprocal altruism."
The Oakeshott lecture was described by Daniel Finkelstein, Comment Editor at The Times as "an audacious attempt by the Conservative Party's leading intellectual to relate a new Tory narrative" .
Read more about Civic Conservatism: Influence, Bibliography
Famous quotes containing the words civic and/or conservatism:
“It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find themselves at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the formidable tentacular oppression of a kind of civic magic which will soon be seen appearing openly in social behavior.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“The world is burdened with young fogies. Old men with ossified minds are easily dealt with. But men who look young, act young and everlastingly harp on the fact that they are young, but who nevertheless think and act with a degree of caution that would be excessive in their grandfathers, are the curse of the world. Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don’t know what they are conserving.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)