Mark A. Evans, Jr.

Dr. Nylen

Comparative Politics—Essay 2

September 27th 2010

What do we mean when we speak of ‘conservatism’? Every day as Americans, we are

bombarded with different ways to define this word…this idea. In fact, the actual definition of

‘conservatism’ is extremely obscure in current American culture; some use it when referring to their

religious beliefs, others to communicate a particular political disposition [left and right], while yet, some

use the word conservative in sole reference to their views regarding economic theory. Really, when you

take some time to consider all of the ways for which the word ‘conservative’ is defined in the English

language, all we seem to find is a mixed up clutter of idiom and ideologies that make very little concrete

sense, not to mention, something that is particularly difficult to measure. To assist us in answering the

question, “is America Conservative because its citizens are conservative”, Draper and Ramsay help us to

understand, first and foremost, what the term ‘conservatism’ really means, then answer why the United

States is considered a conservative democracy, through the observations of various American

institutions and policy choices.

Draper and Ramsay explain that Conservative regimes are defined as such because of the

particular “political, policy, and institutional structures that they choose to hold”. [ CITATION Dra08 \p

128-135 \n \l 1033 ] In the United States, these three factors have molded and shaped a nation that is

particularly conservative. In this essay, I will discuss the political, policy, and institutional structures

chosen by the American state and use them to explain why our nation is conservative. As we will see

through this discourse, American citizens have had, and continue to have, very little control over

whether or not the United States remains a conservative nation.

 The United States’ [political] institutional structure has lent itself towards shaping one of the

most conservative democracies in the world. The way in which our state’s system functions, makes for a

very strict and rigid division of power. “The United States has a federal system, with power divided

vertically between the national and state governments.”[ CITATION Dra08 \p 166 \l 1033 ] The authority

held by the federal government is defined in the Constitution 1 of the United States, while “the Tenth

Amendment to the Constitution specifies that all powers not expressly delegated to the federal

government belong to the states.”[ CITATION Dra08 \p 166 \l 1033 ] The founding fathers who crafted

the American Constitution were very concerned regarding the separation of the State’s authority,

because of [the more] authoritarian types of rule which they were accustomed. This fear of “egalitarian

consequences, and their continued belief in democracy, led the American forefathers to create a

complex system of checks and balances. These divisions of power are meant to make achieving a

majority rule difficult, although not impossible.”[ CITATION Dra08 \p 167 \l 1033 ]

The American national government is split into three different branches of government. While

all three of these government sects are meant to keep the other two’s power in check, it is noted in

Draper and Ramsay that “not all three are equal in the amount of power/influence that they have.”

[ CITATION Dra08 \p 167 \n \l 1033 ] The three branches of government are the Executive, Legislative,

and Judicial branches of government. The Executive section of our government consists of the President

and his cabinet. The President, in a Federalist system, is seen as the “energy center of the federal

government, setting the agenda and providing leadership to it.”[ CITATION Dra08 \l 1033 ] The

legislative branch consists of the Senate and House of Representatives and is mainly responsible for the

policy making process. While this is their primary responsibility, the journey of writing and passing

legislation travels in a slow and difficult manner. “The policy-making process involving the House,

Senate, and President is torturous and filled with innumerable veto-points at which bills can be

1
A Constitution is a fundamental law determining the fundamental political principles of a government
defeated...bills may fail at the committee level, may never be scheduled to a vote on the House and/or

Senate floors, may be defeated when it comes up for a vote during actual Senate/House meetings,

and/or the House and Senate may never be able to reconcile the two passed bills into one identical one,

”[ CITATION Dra08 \p 168 \l 1033 ] The third and “least dangerous branch”[ CITATION Dra08 \p 169 \l

1033 ] of the American government is the Judicial branch. This is the weakest branch of government

and usually is considered to be the one with the least amount of power. The Judiciary’s main purpose is

to “interpret the law as according to the Constitution”[ CITATION Dra08 \p 169 \l 1033 ], which is an

important job, as after their interpretation is stated, it stands.

The aforementioned division of power within the American governmental structure can help

explain why the United States continues to be such a conservative democracy, while often times the

majority of its citizens do not always hold such conservative beliefs. In fact, the institutional/structural

framework for which this nation has been founded is one that is quite resistant to change; protecting

the values of those in power, while considering very little the opinions of average citizens’

conservative/liberal leanings. The difficulty that one party has [over another] when trying to push

legislation through Congress [considering the veto-points mentioned earlier] provides for a painstaking

process that forces deliberation and moderation of policy choices and agendas, while usually kicking

laws, that are ideologically outside more moderate/conservative parameters, to the curb. While

structure/institutions play a leading role as to why America remains a conservative regime, there is also

another key factor to this nature; which is the almighty dollar and how it exists in Capitalism.

Another primary measure, for which American conservatism has been reinforced, is its political

economic structure and the policies/institutions put in place to impose these conservative priorities 2. In

the United States, “the production and allocation of goods and services is left almost wholly to the

2
By priorities, I am referring to free markets with little government intervention and substantive policies that focus
on the needs of corporations and their owners.
market, with the state relegated to influencing them marginally from the sidelines.” [ CITATION Dra08 \p

128 \l 1033 ] As we will be able to see through the study of American political and economic

institutions, the ‘market’ and its forces are largely what drive American political action and the

conservatism it breeds.

As I mentioned above, the American political framework has always reinforced a conservative

perspective of political and economic policy. Whether the state is governed by Democrat or Republican 3

state, the ideologies that have furthered the two main political parties in the United States can be

attributed to the growth and spread of market capitalism, along with an extremely small amount of

government intervention within this economy. This open and privatized style of capitalist structure has

leant greatly in keeping the United States a conservative democracy. According to Karl Marx, “capitalism

developed [in the United States] more ‘shamelessly’, in an undiluted form than anywhere else….because

capitalists4 enjoyed great political influence and American workers displayed little class consciousness,

such that unions and working-class political parties tended to be weak and overmatched. 5”[ CITATION

Dra08 \p 161 \l 1033 ] Capitalism, by its nature, breeds inequality. The large gap between capitalists and

the proletariat, regarding income and political power, is one reason for there to exist a “continued

lower-class weakness in politics and in the labor market”[ CITATION Dra08 \p 161 \l 1033 ] within the

American political structure.

As Draper and Ramsay state, “class matters less in the United States than almost anywhere else

in determining how people vote, but it matters more than almost anywhere else in determining who

3
The two major American political parties
4
Meaning wealthy business owners and those who run/control supply in the free markets
5
Considering this statement, it is important to understand that the United States of America is a very
heterogeneous nation, consisting of many different individuals who have, at times, very different and diverse
cultural backgrounds. Social cleavages, such as race, often times take [and have taken] precedence in political/civil
mobilization, over issues such as class. This is another reason as to why Capitalism found a stronghold in the United
States.
vote.”[ CITATION Dra08 \p 164 \n \l 1033 ] This is important to note when considering the question,

“why does America continue to be a conservative nation regardless of its citizens’ opinions”, because, as

class cleavages in the United States have become more spread [between the rich and the poor], because

of extreme market capitalism, a majority of the middle to poor [socioeconomic] individuals in our nation

neglect their right to vote due to feelings that their vote really doesn’t count and that their situations

will not change regardless of whether they choose to vote or not. Consequently, due to this change,

“the moderate center in American politics has disappeared, changing the face of American politics from

a system of representation, to a more coarse and ideologically partisan system, in which it is much more

complicated to forge bipartisan compromise.”[ CITATION Dra08 \p 164 \l 1033 ]

So, as we have seen through this brief study and observation of the American government and

the institutions/policies that comprise it, the American people are not necessarily the cause for its

continued “conservatism”. Formal institutions, such as the United States’ Constitution and the

separation of powers as it describes, along with extreme market capitalist policies that tend to negate

the importance of certain populations’ civil/political activism, all contribute to the continuance of our

beloved[and at times despised] conservative regime. The aforementioned institutions, while protecting

us from an authoritarian form of government, have also [more recently] reinforced division in both

houses of Congress, as well as between our nation’s common folk. This polarization within our

government has led to much inaction instead of progress, while still reinforcing conservative ideology

that lends its writing hand to businesses instead of citizens. So, as these policies are kept intact by a

heavily ‘checked and balanced’ system, let’s hope that the wheels on this conservative bus do continue

to go ‘round and round’, as the driver [institutions/capitalists] continues to keep their collective foot on

the brakes.
Bibliography
Draper, Alan and Ansil Ramsay. The Good Society. New York: Pearson Education, INC, 2008.