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New in OUP Comparative Politics Series: A systematic analysis of interwar democracies

OUP Authors

New in the Oxford University Press / ECPR Comparative Politics Series is Democratic Stability in an Age of Crisis: Reassessing the Interwar Period by Agnes Cornell, Jørgen Møller, and Svend-Erik Skaaning


Democratic Stability in an Age of Crisis: Reassessing the Interwar PeriodAbout the book

  • Analyses and compares all democratic countries during the period between the world wars
  • Examines why some interwar democracies broke down while others survived
  • Sheds new light on the extent to which present-day democracies are fragile in the face of crisis

The interwar period left a deep impression on later generations. It was an age of crises where representative democracy, itself a relatively recent political invention, seemed unable to cope with the challenges that confronted it.

Against the backdrop of the economic crisis that began in 2008 and the rise of populist parties, a new body of scholarship – frequently invoked by the media – has used interwar political developments to warn that even long-established Western democracies are fragile.

Democratic Stability in an Age of Crisis challenges this 'interwar analogy' based on the fact that a relatively large number of interwar democracies were able to survive the recurrent crises of the 1920s and 1930s. The book's main aim is to understand the striking resilience of these democracies, and how they differed from the many democracies that broke down during the same period.

The authors advance an explanation that emphasises the importance of democratic legacies and the strength of the associational landscape (i.e. organised civil society and institutionalised political parties). They underline that these factors were themselves associated with a set of deeper structural conditions, which on the eve of the interwar period had brought about different political pathways. The authors' empirical strategy consists of a combination of comparative analyses of all interwar democratic spells and illustrative case studies.

The book's main takeaway is that the interwar period shows how resilient democracy is once it has had time to consolidate. On this basis, recent warnings about the fragility of contemporary democracies in Western Europe and North America seem exaggerated – or, at least, that they cannot be sustained by interwar evidence.

In their own words

Svend-Erik Skaaning — “Our project was initially inspired by three observations: First, an imbalanced focus on democratic breakdowns in the interwar years in the literature. Second, the strong geographical regularity in the fate of interwar democracies, and, third, the superficial use of interwar analogies to understand the political repercussions of recent economic crises.

We expected that democratic legacies and the strength of civil societies and political parties were key to understand the interwar regime trajectories. After several years of hard work, we managed to establish a coherent theoretical framework and to examine it through comprehensive statistical analysis of all interwar democratic episodes. They were complemented by four case-studies of Denmark, France, the UK, and Uruguay, which illustrate and lend further support to our theoretical argument.

We believe that our account offers novel and robust findings, which help us to shed new light on the conditions of democratic resilience in the interwar period and to better understand the challenges faced by current democracies.”

Agnes Cornell — “It is far too early to draw any conclusions about how the corona pandemic will impact today’s democracies, but, if the trend during the interwar period sheds any light on the current situation, we could conclude the following:

The risk of democratic breakdown is very low in established democracies with a long experience of competitive elections and a strong associational landscape. In contrast, the risk of breakdown is much higher in democracies without a long experience of democratic rule and weaker parties and civil society.” 
 


Agnes CornellAgnes Cornell

Agnes is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, where she teaches comparative politics, public administration, and methods. Her work has been published in distinguished journals such as Journal of Politics, Governance, Journal of Peace Research, Democratization, and Journal of Democracy.

 

 

 


Jørgen Møller Jørgen Møller

Jørgen is Professor at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark, where he teaches Comparative Politics and International Relations. His publications include State Formation, Regime Change, and Economic Development (Routledge, 2017).

 

 

 

 


Svend-Erik SkaaningSvend-Erik Skaaning 

Svend-Erik is Professor at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark. His publications include The Rule of Law: Definitions, Measures, Patterns, and Causes (with J Møller, Palgrave, 2014).

 

 

 

 


Oxford University Press►  Browse the full list of ECPR / OUP Comparative Politics titles

Keywords: Democracy

05 June 2020
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