Democratic Stability in an Age of Crisis

Abstract

The interwar period has left a deep impression on later generations. This was an age of crises where representative democracy, itself a relatively recent political invention, seemed unable to cope with the challenges that confronted it. It has recently become popular to make present-day analogies to the political developments of the 1920s and 1930s. This book asks whether such historical analogies make sense and why some democracies were able to cope with the stress of interwar crises whereas others were not. Focusing on democratic stability in Europe, the former British settler colonies, and Latin America, the book emphasizes the importance of democratic legacies and the strength of the associational landscape (i.e., organized civil society and institutionalized political parties) for the chances of democratic survival. Moreover, the book shows that these factors where themselves associated with a set of deeper structural conditions, which on the eve of the interwar period had brought about different political pathways.