Suchergebnisse

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- CHAPTER 1 Reexamining Interwar Social Democracy -- CHAPTER 2 Evaluating the Role of Ideas -- CHAPTER 3 Sweden's Political Development and the Programmatic Beliefs of the SAP -- CHAPTER 4 Germany's Political Development and the Programmatic Beliefs of the SPD -- CHAPTER 5 Sweden's Path to Democracy -- CHAPTER 6 Germany's Path to Democracy -- CHAPTER 7 The Origins of Social Democratic Hegemony -- CHAPTER 8 The Collapse of German Democracy -- CHAPTER 9 Understanding Interwar Social Democracy -- Notes -- Index

At the end of the twentieth century, many believed the story of European political development had come to an end. Modern democracy began in Europe, but for hundreds of years, dictatorship rather than democracy had been the norm. Now, though, the entire continent was in the democratic camp for the first time. But by the beginning of the twenty-first century the story had already begun to unravel. Some of the continent's newer democracies were backsliding toward dictatorship, while citizens in many of its older democracies began questioning democracy's functioning and even legitimacy. Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe traces the long history of democracy in its cradle, Europe. It takes readers through more than two centuries of turmoil, revolutions, fascism, civil wars, communism and-finally-the rebuilding of democracy in Western Europe after 1945 and the emergence of democracy in Eastern Europe after 1989. Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe explains why democracy proved so difficult to achieve in Europe and draws lessons from Europe's past that can help us understand the conditions necessary for democracy to flourish.

Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Reexamining Interwar Social Democracy -- 2. Evaluating the Role of Ideas -- 3. Sweden's Political Development and the Programmatic Beliefs of the SAP -- 4. Germany's Political Development and the Programmatic Beliefs of the SPD -- 5. Sweden's Path to Democracy -- 6. Germany's Path to Democracy -- 7. The Origins of Social Democratic Hegemony -- 8. The Collapse of German Democracy -- 9. Understanding Interwar Social Democracy -- Notes -- Index.

The global ascendance of populism has produced an explosion of research, bringing together scholarship on American and comparative politics as well as encouraging intellectual exchange among political scientists, economists, and sociologists. A good way to get a handle on what is now a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary literature is to focus on the key debates characterizing it. This article reviews the literature on the causes of populism, and in particular right-wing populism, in the United States, Europe, and other advanced industrial nations generally, but much of this literature draws on and refers to research on other parts of the world as well. This review analyzes the nature as well as the strengths and weakness of demand- and supply-side explanations of populism, economic grievance–based and sociocultural grievance–based explanations of populism, and structure- and agency-based explanations of populism.

Among the many scholarly attempts to reckon with the causes and consequences of Donald Trump's rise, few have attracted popular attention on the scale of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt's How Democracies Die. Seldom do books by political scientists make it onto the New York Times best sellers list, but this one has, a testament to its broad influence. Levitsky and Ziblatt situate Trumpism within a broader comparative and historical context in order to assess its similarities to and differences from democratic breakdowns elsewhere, particularly in Europe and Latin America. Their broad argument is that modern slides into authoritarianism are not the result of revolutions or military coups, but rather the consequence of a steady erosion of political norms and the assault on such fundamental democratic institutions as an independent judiciary and a free press. In short, contemporary democracies die not as a result of men with guns attacking from outside the system, but rather because elected leaders from inside that system slowly undermine them. Judged from this standpoint, the authors argue that American democracy is now in real danger, and they offer a range of suggestions for saving it. How convincing is Levitsky and Ziblatt's analysis of democratic breakdown, and how well does it apply to the American case? How useful are the solutions that they offer for rescuing American democracy? We have asked a range of prominent scholars from across the discipline to consider these questions in the present symposium.