What is conservatism?

From concept to measurement

Abstract

The political, social, and economic history of the West is periodically determined by crises and changes. At the same time, we also identified the advance of “conservative waves”. Despite it being a recurrent phenomenon since the 18th century, the theoretical and empirical development on the subject within the Social Sciences, and especially within Political Science, continues to have relevant gaps. Hence, this article’s main objective is to contribute to this research topic. Our path starts from the theoretical analysis of the phenomenon – from a critical and in-depth bibliographic review – followed by the development of tools which contribute to the application of this knowledge to the current reality. In the empirical application, we use the World Values ​​Survey (WVS) database applied to two emblematic cases: Brazil and the United States.