Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy

How do democracies form and what makes them die? Daniel Ziblatt revisits this timely and classic question in a wide-ranging historical narrative that traces the evolution of modern political democracy in Europe from its modest beginnings in 1830s Britain to Adolf Hitler's 1933 seizure of power in Weimar Germany. Based on rich historical and quantitative evidence, the book offers a major reinterpretation of European history and the question of how stable political democracy is achieved. The barriers to inclusive political rule, Ziblatt finds, were not inevitably overcome by unstoppable tides of socioeconomic change, a simple triumph of a growing middle class, or even by working class collective action. Instead, political democracy's fate surprisingly hinged on how conservative political parties - the historical defenders of power, wealth, and privilege - recast themselves and coped with the rise of their own radical right. With striking modern parallels, the book has vital implications for today's new and old democracies under siege.

Author: Daniel Ziblatt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 04/17/2017
Pages: 448
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.62lbs
Size: 9.43h x 6.30w x 1.19d
ISBN: 9781107001626

Review Citation(s):
Choice 05/01/2018

About the Author
Ziblatt, Daniel: - Daniel Ziblatt is Professor of Government at Harvard University, Massachusetts where he is also a resident fellow of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies. He is also currently Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence. His first book, Structuring the State: The Formation of Italy and Germany and the Puzzle of Federalism (2006) received several prizes from the American Political Science Association. He has also written extensively on the emergence of democracy in European political history, publishing in journals such as American Political Science Review, the Journal of Economic History, and World Politics. Ziblatt has held visiting fellowships and professorships at Sciences Po, Paris; the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Germany; Stanford University, California; the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Massachusetts; and the Center for Advanced Studies, Munich, Germany.