Right-wing Politics - History

History

The political term right-wing originates from the French Revolution, when liberal deputies from the Third Estate generally sat to the left of the president's chair, a habit which began in the Estates General of 1789. The nobility, members of the Second Estate, generally sat to the right. In the successive legislative assemblies, monarchists who supported the Ancien Régime were commonly referred to as rightists, because they sat on the right side. A major figure on the right was Joseph de Maistre, who argued for an authoritarian form of conservatism. Throughout the 19th century, the main line dividing Left and Right in France was between supporters of the Republic and supporters of the Monarchy. On the right, the Legitimists and Ultra-royalists held counter-revolutionary views, while the Orléanists hoped to create a constitutional monarchy under their preferred branch of the royal family, a brief reality after the 1830 July Revolution. The centre-right Gaullists in post-World War II France advocated considerable social spending on education and infrastructure development, as well as extensive economic regulation, but limited the wealth redistribution measures characteristic of social democracy.

According to The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought, the Right has gone through five distinct historical stages: (i) the reactionary right, which sought a return to aristocracy and established religion; (ii) the moderate right, who sought limited government and distrusted intellectuals; (iii) the radical right, who favored a romantic and aggressive nationalism; (iv) the extreme right, who proposed anti-immigration policies and implicit racism; and (v) the neo-liberal right, who sought to combine a belief in a market economy and economic deregulation with the traditional Right-wing beliefs in patriotism, élitism, and law and order.