Few debates in the social sciences are as muddled as that concerning the distinctions between authoritarianism and conservatism. To the theoretical confusion and empirical puzzles generated by the highly contingent relationship between authoritarian predisposition and authoritarian attitudes, one can add failure to distinguish authoritarianism from conservatism as another leading source of skepticism regarding the explanatory value of the concept. The idea that intolerance is driven primarily by “conservatism” – however understood – doggedly persists in both scholarly and popular commentary. If the notion of authoritarianism is considered at all, critics tend to assume that the concept is redundant and that authoritarianism is just conservatism in another guise; that authoritarianism is little more than a product of conservatism, at most merely mediating the effect of conservatism on intolerance; or else that authoritarianism – even if distinct in character, differing in origin, and of independent influence – is inconsequential compared to conservatism. In any case, the suspicion is that the concept adds little to our understanding of intolerance.

Clearly, appreciation of the importance of authoritarianism, and of the relative insignificance of conservatism, in fueling general intolerance of difference waits upon evidence of their distinctive characters, causes, and effects. Yet with both authoritarianism and conservatism conceived in different ways by different scholars, with great discrepancies in measurement even among those with shared conceptualizations, and with endless variation in model specification and methodology, fifty years of argument and evidence have brought us no closer to any meaningful consensus regarding the nature and extent of those distinctions.