Democracy and Dictatorship in Interwar Western Europe Revisited
- 1 October 1997
- journal article
- review article
- Published by Project MUSE in World Politics
- Vol. 50 (3), 475-505
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0043887100012880
Abstract
Almost none of the conditions that, according to the latest research, favor democratic durability were present in Western Europe between the world wars. Yet only four Western European states became dictatorships during this period, whereas the others remained democratic despite economic crisis, an unhelpful international system, and the lure of nondemocratic alternatives. Several recent works offer new explanations for this pattern of interwar outcomes. Insofar as these works analyze the entire universe of Western European cases, they represent an important methodological advance. However, they remain too wedded to a class-coalitional framework to provide both a parsimonious and a historically accurate account of why democracy collapsed in some states but not in others. This article proposes an alternative explanatory framework that focuses on how political parties can shape association life in such a way as to support or undermine democracy.Keywords
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