Western Europe’s Democratic Age: 1945-1968

375 Pages·2020·10.258 MB·English

by  Martin Conway

western eu rope’s demo cratic age

Western Eu rope’s
Demo cratic Age
1945–1968
Martin Conway
prince ton university press
prince ton & oxford
Copyright © 2020 by Prince ton University Press
Published by Prince ton University Press
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6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR
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All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978-0-691-20348-5
ISBN (e- book) 978-0-691-20460-4
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data is available
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This book has been composed in Miller
Printed on acid- free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca
10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
contents
List of Illustrations  · vii
Preface and Acknowledgements  · ix
List of Abbreviations  · xi
introduction A Demo cratic Age 1
chapter 1 Making Democracy: The Construction of a
Post- war Demo cratic Order in Western Eur ope 28
chapter 2 Thinking Democracy: The New Model of a
Stable Democracy 98
chapter 3 Debating Democracy: The Dialectic of
Christian Demo crat and Socialist Variants of
Democracy 162
chapter 4 Living Democracy: State Power, Class,
Gender, and the Consumption of Democracy 199
chapter 5 Contesting Democracy: The Demo cratic
Critique of Democracy 255
conclusion Unmaking Demo cratic Eu rope: Democracy
and Post- democracy 294
Bibliography  · 313
Index  ·  353
[ v ]

illustrations
1. Raymond Aron 10
2. The appearance of authority 38
3. V for Victory, and V for Vote 59
4. Female suffrage 115
5. Men (and one woman) in suits 135
6. The visual universe of democracy 182
7. The shop win dow of democracy 229
8. Family democracy 241
9. The democracy of protest 281
10. The world of industrial protest 285
[ vii ]

preface and acknowledgements
a book on the modern history of democracy in Eu rope does, I suspect,
require little justification. Over the years I have been researching and writ-
ing about democracy in twentieth- century Eur ope, I have become con-
scious of how the past has been increasingly invaded by the pre sent. What
began as a historical act of reconstruction has become enmeshed in recent
years in the fierce debates about democracy that have come to the fore in
Eur ope as a w hole, and within its national and local cultures. This book
will, I hope, be a contribution to those wider discussions. But it studies
democracy primarily through the prism of history. It is not an attempt to
explain the pre sent through the past, and it avoids present- minded con-
cepts of the crisis of democracy or its impending demise. Instead, I hope
that the book demonstrates how democracy became a deeply embedded
ele ment of Western Eu rope’s po liti cal and social cultures in the de cades
after 1945. Democracy was not just a po liti cal regime. It became part of
Eur ope’s identity, and how post-w ar generations of Eur op ea ns defined
who they w ere, and how they lived their lives. Democracy does of course
have to change to adapt to changes in society and in pol iti cal aspirations;
and the latter chapters of this book attempt to explain how dissatisfac-
tion with the existing models of democracy developed in Eu rope from the
1960s onwards, and have contributed to the present- day sense of crisis.
This is emphatically a Eur o pean book: in terms of its subject m atter,
the sources on which it draws, the vari ous locations where it was writ-
ten, and above all the p eople who have assisted me along the way. Con-
temporary Eu rop ean history is a collaborative exercise, and I have long
felt myself to be very fortunate in the ways that I have benefited from
discussions with colleagues across Eu rope. During the preparation of this
book, I have been especially grateful for the advice, friendship, guidance,
and innumerable other forms of assistance I have received from Christian
Bailey, Tom Buchanan, Camilo Erlichman, Robert Gerwarth, John- Paul
Ghobrial, José Gotovitch, John Horne, Pieter Lagrou, Colin Lucas, Jim
McMillan, Jeppe Nevers, Phil Nord, Kiran Patel, Alex Paulin- Booth,
Johanna Rainio, Peter Romijn, Alexis Schwarzenbach, and Mary Vincent.
In addition, I am indebted to a number of long- standing friends whose
support I value greatly; notably, Henrietta Foster, David Grogan, Mario
Nehrlich, and Lut Van Daele. F amily is of course the network through
[ ix ]