‘President Bush is an engaging person, but I think for some reason he’s been captured by the neo-conservatives around him,” the Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said this month.

But what exactly is neo-conservatism? Those of us who are designated as “neo-cons” are amused, flattered, or dismissive, depending on the context.

Even I, frequently referred to as the “godfather” of all those neo-cons, have had my moments of wonderment. A few years ago I said (and, alas, wrote) that neo-conservatism had had its own distinctive qualities in its early years, but by now had been absorbed into the mainstream of American conservatism.

I was wrong, and the reason I was wrong is that ever since its origin among disillusioned liberal intellectuals in the 1970s, what we call neo-conservatism has been one of those intellectual undercurrents that surface only intermittently. It is not a “movement”, but a “persuasion” that manifests itself over time.

Viewed in this way, one can say that the historical task and political purpose of neo-conservatism is to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, to a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy. That this new conservative politics is distinctly American is beyond doubt. There is nothing like neo-conservatism in Europe, and most European conservatives are sceptical of its legitimacy.

The fact that conservatism in America is so much healthier than in Europe surely has something to do with the existence of neo- conservatism. But Europeans, who think it absurd to look to America for lessons in political innovation, refuse to consider this possibility.

Neo-conservatism is hopeful, not lugubrious; forward-looking, not nostalgic; and its general tone is cheerful, not grim or dyspeptic. Though most Republicans know little and could not care less about neo-conservatism they cannot be blind to the fact that neo- conservative policies, reaching out beyond the traditional political and financial base, have helped make conservatism more acceptable to voters.

One of the most visible and controversial of these policies is cutting tax rates to stimulate steady economic growth. This policy was not invented by neo-cons, and it was not tax cuts that interested them per se, but rather the steady focus on economic growth.

Neo-cons are familiar with intellectual history and aware that it is only in the past two centuries that democracy has become a respectable option. In earlier times democracy meant an inherently turbulent political regime, with the “have-nots” and the “haves” engaged in a destructive class struggle. It was only the prospect of economic growth in which everyone prospered, if not equally or simultaneously, that gave modern democracies their legitimacy and durability.

Neo-cons would prefer not to have large budget deficits, but they accept that sometimes deficits should be shouldered as the cost of pursuing economic growth. It is a basic assumption of neo-conservatism that, as a consequence of the spread of affluence among all classes, a property-owning and tax-paying population will in time become less vulnerable to egalitarian illusions and demagogic appeals and more sensible about the fundamentals of economic reckoning.

This leads to the issue of the role of the state. Neo-cons do not like the concentration of services in the welfare state and are happy to study alternative ways to deliver them. But they are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on the road to serfdom.

Neo-cons do not feel alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable. Because they tend to be more interested in history than economics or sociology, they know that people have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government.

Neo-cons are comfortable in the modern world although their distaste for the vulgarity and decline in democratic culture unites them with more traditional conservatives. The upshot is a quite surprising mixture of secular intellectuals and religious traditionalists, who are united on issues concerning the quality of education, the relations of church and state and the regulation of pornography, all of which they regard as proper candidates for the government’s attention.