Hierarchicalism also explains why conservatives have generally been suspicious of democracy , because of its levelling consequences and its rejection of caste principles in favour of the presumption of the political equality of all adult citizens. Conservatives gradually accepted democratic institutions, such as universal suffrage, only when they became persuaded that they would not automatically imply the eradication of privilege. Modern conservatives, such as the Austrian philosopher Friedrich von Hayek, have supported representative democracy because they see it as the best system of government for a free-market society. Representative democracy in other words is defended as a means rather than an end. Property Conservativism shares with liberalism a firm commitment to individuals' rights to private property in contradistinction to socialism and communism .
Conservatives make two key arguments for the justice of strong private property rights.
Without strong private property rights there are no real individuals only members of tribes or the serfs of collectivist states. Conservatives part company with liberals, however, because they recognize that the claims of authority or community must sometimes have precedence over the rights of individuals. This difference explains why conservatives, especially in the European Christian Democratic tradition, sometimes accept the principles of the welfare state including progressive taxation and public provision of basic social goods which economic liberals think of as despotic intrusions on property rights. In the last two decades economic liberalism has been on the ascendant among conservatives, and political exponents of this philosophy, known as the 'New Right', have been especially vigorous in the English-speaking advanced liberal democracies. Community Conservatives, unlike liberals, advocate the maintenance or the building of solidaristic unitary communities, united by bonds of affection, blood, ethnicity , language and culture .