Summary: | The focus of this thesis lies on tracing the similarities and differences between Liberal conservatism, Christian democracy and National conservatism, its relationship to the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Sweden Democrats' parties’ own interpretations of conservatism with a further ambition to discuss the ideological preconditions of a conservative parliamentary coalition. This study is based on the assumption that differences and similarities between various types of conservatism depend on relationship between political ideas and political practice. This relationship explains by a model that divides conservatism into fundamental and operative elements. The fundamental element of conservatism is an idea of human imperfection which leads to political skepticism, traditionalism and organicism. Operative elements are identified with support in the classical literature that describes the meaning of each type of conservative practice in a particular context. Furthermore, a typology of three ideal types of conservatism derives from fundamental and operational elements. Based on this typology, the parties' own manifesto is analyzed. The results show that the parties' own interpretations of conservatism contain both similarities that correspond to the fundamental elements and differences that are explained by the contextdependent operative elements. The thesis then opens up for a discussion about how those ideological similarities and differences affects possibilities for a conservative parliamentary coalition.
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