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oapen-20.500.12657-761622023-09-08T02:25:22Z The Rise and Fall of the People's Parties Corduwener, Pepijn democracy, history, political parties, people’s parties, Christian democracy, Social democracy, crisis, populism, twentieth century, Western Europe bic Book Industry Communication::H Humanities::HB History::HBJ Regional & national history::HBJD European history bic Book Industry Communication::H Humanities::HB History::HBT History: specific events & topics::HBTW The Cold War bic Book Industry Communication::J Society & social sciences::JP Politics & government::JPF Political ideologies::JPFK Liberalism & centre democratic ideologies The decline of the centre-left and centre-right people’s parties is arguably the most poignant feature of the crisis of democracy in Western Europe today. To understand why, this book explores the striking parallels between the life of democracy and that of the people’s parties over the course of the past century. It offers a transnational window on the history of democracy since 1918 by weaving together three epochs which are often studied apart: democracy’s troubled history in the Interwar era; the trente glorieuses after the Second World War; and the period since the 1970s. The book shows that democracy was only stabilized and legitimized when people’s parties emerged that managed to balance between facilitating popular participation from below, bridging divisions between social groups, and practising the politics of compromise. Ideas for such parties existed already in the first decades of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, Socialist and Catholic mass parties failed to transform into people’s parties, which was essential for the crisis (and breakdown) of democracy in the Interwar era. This was a traumatic experience which contributed to the unexpected stabilization of democracy after 1945 as party leaders transformed their organizations into broad-based people’s parties that embraced compromise and responsibility. However, this stability did not last, and paradoxically their transformation also harboured the seeds of democracy’s more recent problems. Over the past decades, people’s parties have struggled to connect to an individualizing society while having become increasingly absorbed by their governing responsibilities. 2023-09-07T12:07:17Z 2023-09-07T12:07:17Z 2023 book https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/76162 eng application/pdf Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International 9780192843418.pdf https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-peoples-parties-9780192843418 Oxford University Press 10.1093/oso/9780192843418.001.0001 10.1093/oso/9780192843418.001.0001 b9501915-cdee-4f2a-8030-9c0b187854b2 da087c60-8432-4f58-b2dd-747fc1a60025 Dutch Research Council (NWO) 265 Oxford Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research open access
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The decline of the centre-left and centre-right people’s parties is arguably the most poignant feature of the crisis of democracy in Western Europe today. To understand why, this book explores the striking parallels between the life of democracy and that of the people’s parties over the course of the past century. It offers a transnational window on the history of democracy since 1918 by weaving together three epochs which are often studied apart: democracy’s troubled history in the Interwar era; the trente glorieuses after the Second World War; and the period since the 1970s. The book shows that democracy was only stabilized and legitimized when people’s parties emerged that managed to balance between facilitating popular participation from below, bridging divisions between social groups, and practising the politics of compromise. Ideas for such parties existed already in the first decades of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, Socialist and Catholic mass parties failed to transform into people’s parties, which was essential for the crisis (and breakdown) of democracy in the Interwar era. This was a traumatic experience which contributed to the unexpected stabilization of democracy after 1945 as party leaders transformed their organizations into broad-based people’s parties that embraced compromise and responsibility. However, this stability did not last, and paradoxically their transformation also harboured the seeds of democracy’s more recent problems. Over the past decades, people’s parties have struggled to connect to an individualizing society while having become increasingly absorbed by their governing responsibilities.
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