Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe

The author focuses on four or five representative thinkers in each chapter and mixes political thought with history instructively.

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I haven't read many other studies of fascism yet, but this one serves well as a brief introduction. But what happened in European political thought after ? I became none the wiser on that subject from reading this book. The author discusses Stalin's communism and the Hungarian and Czech uprisings in reasonably interesting fashion, but he struggles to say anything about developments on the western side of the Iron Curtain.

His main contention seems to be that "Christian democracy was the most important ideological innovation of the post-war period, and one of the most significant of the European twentieth century as a whole" p. I detect a strong German myopia in this absurd statement.

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I'm a European resident with many political interests but I had never heard of "Christian democracy" before reading this book. I had to use Wikipedia to discover what this "most important innovation" even means. But even so, Christian democracy could have provided one vantage point for pan-European analysis if properly elaborated.

But strangely enough the author lets go of this concept immediately after introducing it. Instead of discussing the roots of European democracy he focuses almost exclusively on left-wing thought and anti-state protest movements.

He wastes a whole chapter on the student revolt of , a movement whose political thought was rudimentary and inconsequential at best. He even makes room for the repulsive idiocy of Baader-Meinhof terrorists. But what about the various hues of well-functioning liberal democracy in Europe from the s onward?

Were no political ideas needed to make them work? And what about the European Union, to which the author devotes one! Is there really no political thought worth mentioning behind that project either?

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The title "Contesting democracy" might seem to justify an exclusively anti-democratic emphasis throughout the book, but it doesn't make much sense to merely discuss opposing ideas without explaining what they opposed. In summary, the author is in his element when analysing the events that led to the World Wars and the political thought the wars spawned, especially fascist and communist ideology.

He's unwilling to describe the positive development of democratic politics in Europe after the wars and this reduces the value of the latter half of this book to almost nil. Why was the twentieth century the Age of Ideology? How did totalitarian ideologies, such as fascism and communism gain support? These are the questions that Muller seeks to provide answers in the book.

After all, as Muller tries to show us, political ideas in the twentieth century Europe are all about the contested meaning of democracy. I had only meant to glance at this book in a brief break from work, but was pulled in for a non-stop reading session. JWM is a gifted writer and has a truly rare capacity to cut through historical trends and get at the really pivotal distinctions and concepts for understanding them.

The endorsements on the back give a sense of how well-respected the author is as a historian, but more importantly, the expectations they set up are actually met and beyond. He claims inside that it took him over 20 years to write the book A rare corrective to the tendency of all work by academics to be hyper specialized. As one endorsement on the back says: See all 4 reviews.

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway. All had experienced Fascist rule.

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They then became the backbone of the European Economic Community and thus emblematic of the apotheosis European democracy experienced after the war. The problem is that not every European democracy required this apotheosis. Their systems had roots in the nineteenth century, and long had been growing and internalizing democratic values and practices. Liberalisation took place over decades or more: Radical rightist movements, strongest in Finland, had generally been suppressed before When it came to post-war reconstruction, democracy worked in these countries much as before.

Unlike France, Germany, and Italy, their sources of democratic stability were largely sufficient to themselves. The theme of new beginnings pervades the literature on democratization. Apotheosis, when politics becomes elevated to the religious sphere after a crisis that confirms the need for ethical principles, is another. Yet by understanding European democracy through its intellectuals, often at war with themselves , incremental change can be obscured.

No doubt the war was decisive in geo-political terms, but the Christian Democratic formula applies to West Germany and Italy. Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, were consociational democracies. The five Nordic countries were becoming social democracies.

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Britain and Ireland have intertwined histories. Most of east-central Europe developed hybrid systems, just as many post-communist countries are now doing. Scholars like Arend Lijphart are ignored. There is no discussion at all of the concept of neutrality. Contesting Democracy is the work of a good European, a vantage-point with its limitations. Further afield, democratic values did not just radiate outward from larger European states, and many breakthroughs took place on the periphery, changing in turn the core.

This was also the case within Europe. Most of the states which became democratic after were post-imperial. Those most influenced by Fascism Germany, Italy, and Spain were not content to be so. The two most important powers after — the United States and the Soviet Union — were ideologically opposed to Empire. France achieved democratic stability only as it left Algeria. It did not take long before they found another supra-national project to latch onto.

The interconnection between Empire and democracy is central to the European experience. After all empires governed their colonies completely differently to their home countries, many for quite some time.

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The tension between ideas and practice was never so acute as in the colonial encounter. When nation-states discriminate in this way, scholars accept that their contradictions are central to any classification of their polities, and to understanding their historical development. In short this book, for all its ambition, tells only half the story. It draws us to the heart of a dark continent, convulsed in crisis partially because it overreached itself at its outer limits.

The resolution of this larger crisis involved an array of non-Europeans who contested democracy in their own way. His research interests lie broadly within the areas of comparative and Irish politics. Click here to cancel reply. Explore the latest social science book reviews by academics and experts. Previous post Next post. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.

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