Governability in interwar Europe: A formal model of authority and performance

Abstract

European polities in the interwar period faced fundamental challenges to their political institutions. Some nations, such as Germany and Italy, succumbed to pressures and their regimes underwent fundamental and rapid change. Other nations, such as Britain and Sweden, overcame such pressures by adapting their regimes to changing circumstances. All nations faced a crisis of governability that threatened their political regimes and tested their political leaderships. The crises that European states confronted during the interwar years shaped the theoretical interests of a generation of social scientists. Accounting for the persistence and change of the governing institutions of nations in interwar Europe has been of paramount historical and theoretical interest to comparativists. Many explanations of regime change in the interwar period have been offered. However, two distinct perspectives are the ones most frequently advanced. The first, a structuralist argument, holds that regimes changed because they were not constructed properly. If the parts of a governmentits structures and processes--did not "fit" or "align" properly, then the government did not last. The regime changed to another form that, potentially at least, was properly constructed. The second explanation, a funct ionalis t argument, holds that regimes changed because they did not perform properly. If a government was politically unstable, then that government did not last. The regime changed to another form that, potentially at least, would work properly. Social scientists have made compelling arguments for both explanations. This paper examines this controversy over the causes of regime change in interwar Europe. We integrate both sets of explanations into a structural equation model of the "crisis of governability" that these polities faced. In spite of the great interest social scientists have in this historical era, ours is the first formal model and large-scale empirical investigation of these issues.