Event overview
Lasting gains for democracy in twentieth-century Europe were only won through those concentrated periods of change we call revolutions.
What Produces Democracy? Revolutionary Crises, Popular Politics, and Democratic Gains in Twentieth-Century Europe
Democracy in Europe has been a fragile, contested, unfinished, and relatively recent growth. It dates from the revolutionary crisis after the First World War and then only fleetingly before being swept away. Only after 1945, via the victory over fascism, were democratic goods reliably attained. Even then, in Socialist eastern Europe and the Iberian and Greek south, either Stalinist or right-wing counter-revolutions supervened, before popular mobilisations in the 1970s and 1989 established the conditions of constitutional democracy there as well. How were democratic capacities produced? Democracy did not evolve organically out of a natural consensus based in civil society, from the fruits of economic growth and prosperity, or behind the protective cement of the Cold War. Not, as we are encouraged to believe since the 1990s, are its chances linked inseparably to the establishing of a market order. Rather, it requires conflict-courageous challenges to authority, risk-taking and reckless exemplary acts, ethical witnessing, violent confrontations, and general crises through which the given socio-political order breaks down. Democracy in Europe was painstakingly crafted by varying constellations of socialist, feminist, Communist and other radical movements, whose distinctive strengths originated in the late 19th century. Lasting gains for democracy have only ever been won through concentrated periods of change we call revolutions. Focusing first on aspects of popular political culture and then gendered dimensions of citizenship, this talk will make its detailed case from a contrast between the political settlements following the two world wars.
All Welcome.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 11 May 2015 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
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