This volume offers a unique comparative perspective on post-war conservatism as it traces the
rise and mutations of conservative ideas in three countries ¿ Britain France and the United
States - across a ¿short¿ twentieth century (1929-1990) and examines the reconfiguration of
conservatism as a transnational phenomenon. This framework allows for an important and
distinctive point --the 1980s were less a conservative revolution than a moment when
conservatism understood in Burkean terms was outflanked by its various satellites and
political avatars namely populism neoliberalism reaction and cultural and gender
traditionalism. No long running unique ¿conservative mind¿ comes out of this book¿s
transnational investigation. The 1980s did not witness the ascendancy of a movement with deep
roots in the 18th century reaction to the French Revolution but rather the decline of
conservatism and the rise of movements and rhetoric that had remained marginal to traditional
conservatism.
