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.

The problem with which this investigation is concerned is that of determining the differential impact of an introductory economics course on the liberalism/conservatism of students, as compared to an introductory course in sociology or psychology. In addition, the study seeks to determine whether a significant relationship exists between a course in microeconomics and student conservatism. The source of data is the pre- and posttest class means of the scores on the Rokeach Opinionation Scale, measuring liberalism/conservatism. Chapter Five contains the conclusion that there is a significant difference between postmean scores on liberalism/conservatism of the students in economics and those in sociology or psychology. Also, an introductory course in microeconomics produces significantly different mean gains in student conservatism, as measured by the Opinionation Scale/compared to mean gains in an introductory course in sociology or psychology. A nonhypothesized relationship emerged between teacher attitude and student posttest mean scores on the Opinionation Scale.

This study was designed to investigated the role of religious ideology in one's willingness or reluctance to seek professional psychotherapeutic assistance. The subjects consister of 220 members randomly selected from six different denominations: Baptist, Church of Christ, Methodist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, and Unitarian. The major findings of the study were as follows: 1. HC Ss displayed significantly less personal recognition of need for psychotherapeutic help, less interpersonal openness and greater overall reluctance to seek professional psychological help than LC Ss. 2. There was no significant difference between HC and LC Ss in terms of sensitivity to stigmatization and confidence in the mental health profession and mental health professionals. 3. MC Ss scored lower in each of the five areas investigated than did either HC or LC Ss. It was concluded that individuals who are highly conservative in their religious beliefs may be more reluctant to admit that they have a psychological problem with someone else than individuals who subscribe to more moderate or liberal religious beliefs.

This dissertation has three chapters studying accounting conservatism in the property-liability (P&L) insurance industry. There are two types of accounting conservatism – ex-ante (unconditional) conservatism and ex-post (conditional) conservatism. The former means that firms over-report liabilities initially, before more detailed information becomes available. The latter means that firms respond to this new information asymmetrically by recognizing expected losses more quickly than expected gains. My analysis throughout the dissertation focuses on the loss reserve accruals since it is the most significant accruals on the balance sheet. One benefit of studying the P&L insurance industry is that we have specific and detailed information regarding the development of loss reserve accruals over time. Chapter 1 is an executive summary of the next two chapters, highlighting the key results, the policy implications, and the contributions of the dissertation. Chapter 2 studies the two types of accounting conservatism and explore three research questions: (1) whether ex-ante and ex-post conservatism prevails in the P&L insurance industry; (2) what the relations are between ex-post conservatism and other managerial incentives including ex-ante conservatism; and (3) how much the opportunity cost is for being conservative. I study all U.S. domiciled P&L insurance companies from 1996 to 2012 and follow the previous literature to measure accounting conservatism in Chapter 2. I find that both types of accounting conservatism prevail in the insurance industry. Besides, the back-of-the-envelope estimates based on the industry average insurer indicate that their opportunity costs are trivial compared to the amounts of net income and total assets. Chapter 2 also shows that the practices of ex-ante and ex-post conservatism exhibit a nonlinear, U-shape relationship. This finding supports the view that the two types of conservatism can be compliments because they can serve for different purposes. Ex-ante conservatism is mainly used to create a cushion against future unexpected losses, whereas ex-post conservatism can reduce informational frictions. In Chapter 3, I develop a new method of assessing conditional conservatism using more detailed data from the insurance industry. I look at how conditional conservatism affects insolvency risk and the financial strength rating of P&L insurance companies. I also investigate how a change to accounting rules affects conditional conservatism. The new method of measuring conditional conservatism is based on the concavity of the loss development curve. I study all U.S. domiciled P&L insurance companies from 1995 to 2015 and find that the greater the degree of conditional conservatism, the lower is insolvency probability, and the better is the financial strength rating, with other things being constant. The result indicates that regulators and rating agencies do reward insurers that voluntarily utilize conditional conservatism accounting strategy. Moreover, I find that the level of conditional conservatism is reduced after the enactment of the Model Audit Rule (MAR). MAR, like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act Section 404, increased board oversight of internal risk management. The result suggests that complying with additional disclosure requirements provides a “safe harbor” for insurance companies so that they have fewer incentives to be conditionally conservative. / Business Administration/Risk Management and Insurance

No description available.

This research was concerned with the possible effects that religion, especially conservative Protestantism, has upon the performance of fatherhood. The influence of religion was assessed using the religious beliefs reported by fathers. The performance of fatherhood focused on the amount of time fathers spent meeting the physical needs of their young children. This research hypothesized that conservative Protestant fathers would spend more time meeting their children's physical needs than other Protestant fathers. Also hypothesized was that the level of conservative Protestant beliefs held by fathers is positively related to the proportion of time they spent meeting the physical needs of their children out of the total time spent by fathers and mothers combined. Finally, it was hypothesized that the level of conservative Protestant beliefs held by fathers was positively related to their membership in conservative religious denominations. In order to test whether conservative Protestantism has an effect upon the amount of time that fathers spend meeting the physical needs of their young children, this study will used data from the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), completed in 1988. Regression analysis was used to test the first two hypotheses and crosstabulation analysis was used to test the third hypothesis. The first two hypotheses were not supported. However, interaction was detected between the variables of race and conservative Protestantism. Specifically, Black conservative Protestant fathers consistently did more childcare than Black non-conservative Protestant fathers, and all other Protestant fathers, whether conservative or not. The third hypothesis was accepted because an index of conservative beliefs was established using denominational labels. Like other recent studies, there was a lack of consensus about which variables predict how much time fathers will spend with their children. This study also points out the need for further research concerned with conservative Protestants and the impact of their beliefs on families.

This work focuses on a different categorisation of conservatism. A historical timeline-based categorisation which divides Conservatism into three different parts. The first part is called “Classical Conservatism”, this ideology was primarily used as a reaction to liberal radicalism from 1789-1880 and beyond. It is also the base and root of conservatism as an ideology. The second part is called Modern Conservatism and stretches from about 1880 to about 1990, this Conservatism is still in use and are competing and cooperating with the third part. The third part of Conservatism is called Post-modern Conservatism, this conservatism began partially in the 1980s but didn’t start to make a name for itself before the 2000s. While the first and second part focuses much on the preservation of culture, nation-state and old privileges of the higher classes the third part focuses on preserving the welfare-state and the protection of native peoples and their culture against globalism. The purpose of this work is to see how well does this theory of three different Conservatisms apply, then compare these three parts and summarize how Conservatism has changed over the centuries and what it means for the conservative ideology when categorising in this way.

The political party Sweden democrats became Sweden’s third largest party in 2014 after entering the Swedish parliament back in 2010 for the first time. During this time discussions about the party background and ideology have increased both from other parties and in the society. The controversy surrounding the party can partly be traced back to its foundation and the period before the party entered the national parliament in 2010. Sweden democrats was founded in 1988 by the remains of two right wing extremist movements, today the party has distanced itself from Nazism and calls itself a social conservative party. According to studies Sweden democrat’s ideology is considered as right-wing radical populism. This difference of identification is a problem, because it creates questions why it exists. Are the Sweden democrats really a social conservative party or is the party rendering a false image, and why. In this essay I will use ideal types of the two ideologies social conservative and Right-wing radical populism to evaluate which ideal type can describe the ideology in the party materials of the Swedish democrats most adequate. Additionally this essay will compare the ideal types to see how different the two ideologies are. The analysis and conclusion shows that the two ideologies differs from each other, but they share a few aspects. The evaluation of Sweden democrats party material does show that the party shares the fundamental value of right-wing radical populism and contains attributes from that theory, including etno-nationalism and etno-pluralism. The essays conclusion is therefore that Sweden democrats appears to be a right-wing radical populist party. That creates a question for future research, why the party identify itself as a social conservative party.

Thesis (doctoral)--Florida State University. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [253]-282) and index.

The subject of this diploma thesis is to examine and compare the ideological and programmatic definition of Fidesz and PiS, their development in time and their current actions and policy-making since forming their single-party governments in 2010 in Hungary and 2015 in Poland, respectively. This work also focuses on the development in both countries during the transformation from communism towards democracy, and sets out to answer what preconditions have formed the demand for populist radical right ideology both in Hungary and Poland. Based on the theory of populist radical right framework, this thesis concludes that, in addition to the negative aspects of political and economic transformation, historical narratives and prejudices against minorities by a significant part of the Hungarian and Polish societies have also played a crucial role in creating a climate for demand for the populist radical right. In the third chapter, this thesis finds a high volatility in the ideological development of both parties, especially in regards to Fidesz, and attributes these considerable ideological and programmatic changes in part to reaction of Fidesz and PiS towards changes in the party system in both Hungary and Poland. However, since 2006 the ideology of both parties has become increasingly consistent with...