Abstract:
This study attempts to locate and draw out the substantive notions, attitudes and identities which have characterised a century and a half of conservative experience in New Zealand. It seeks to articulate the character of New Zealand conservatism through the distinctive and sometimes contradictory strands of conservative expression which have appealed to particular groups or individuals for different reasons and at different periods throughout New Zealand history. These diverse traditions include a patrician conservative identity which lasted from earliest years of colonisation until the mid-twentieth century, a popular conservative tradition which began to emerge in the last decade of the nineteenth century and which was New Zealand conservatism's response to mass democracy, a populist tradition represented by Robert Muldoon, and a New Right movement in the 1980s which was a reassertion of core conservative principles. This study does not attempt a strict categorisation of these traditions because often they overlap, and necessarily are subject to the everyday compromises that are the practical experience of politics. It also attempts to highlight the international context of New Zealand conservatism, pointing to the continuing interplay of inherited British political traditions and New Zealand conditions.