Postwar Democracy Research Articles

Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan

Nearly forty years after the outbreak of the Minamata Disease, it remains one of the most horrific examples of environmental poisoning. Based on primary documents and interviews, this book describes three rounds of responses to this incidence of mercury poisoning, focusing on the efforts of its victims and their supporters, particularly the activities of grassroots movements and popular campaigns, to secure redress. George argues that Japan's postwar democracy is ad hoc, fragile, and dependent on definition through citizen action and that the redress effort is exemplary of the great changes in the second and third postwar decades that redefined democracy in Japan.

Race, Social Welfare, and the Decline of Postwar Liberalism: A New or Old Key?

Fifty‐one years ago, when liberalism and social welfare democracy were expanding in all advanced industrialized nations, V.O. Key, Jr., forecast the decline of postwar liberalism in the United States. Current discussion of the decline of liberalism has ignored Key or, when evidence is lacking, has incorrectly cited him. In contrast to Key's relatively direct, simple, and heavily documented reasoning, current explanations are multifactorial, complex, less well documented, and often ideologically loaded. Some explanations for the “postwar” decline identify causal factors more than six years after the war, yet they ignore events in 1945–47. At the fifty‐first anniversary of V.O. Key's Southern Politics in State and Nation, attention to Key's forecast and Occam's razor is called for. Key argued that racism in the South, exerted through congressional committees, would lead to a decline of liberalism in the nation. Using “legislative histories,” this article compares Key's single‐factor “racial” explanation with a two‐factor explanation—and by implication with multifactor ones—and finds Key's more compelling and parsimonious. Archival sources indicate that more than two years before the 1948 Democratic Convention, Charlie Ross, Truman's closest advisor, and Truman himself encouraged Key to assess the emerging postwar politics of the South. As Key anticipated, institutionalized racism sunk the Fair Deal and postwar social democracy, despite Truman's efforts. The effects of racism on postwar and current politics and public administration should be reexamined as a key to understanding American distinctiveness or exceptionalism.

Post-war Democracy and the Symbolic Emperor System of Japan

Post-war Democracy and the Symbolic Emperor System of Japan

The German Predicament: Memory and Power in the New Europe

What does the unification of Germany really mean? In their stimulating exploration of that question, Andrei S. Markovits and Simon Reich sketch diametrically different interpretations than are frequently offered by commentators. One is that Germany, well aware of the Holocaust, has been 'Europeanized' and is now prepared to serve as the capitalist and democratic locomotive that powers Europe. The other is that the proclivities behind Auschwitz have been suppressed rather than obliterated from the German psyche. Germany's liberal democracy was imposed by the allied victors, according to this view, and will one day dissolve, revealing the old expansionist tendencies to try to 'Germanize' all of Europe. Markovits and Reich argue that benign contemporary assessments of Germany's postwar democracy, combined with admiration for the country's economic achievements, contribute to German influence far greater than military might was able to achieve. Yet, at the same time, some Germans have internalized liberal and pacifist principles and now see their nation as powerless, simply a larger Switzerland. As a result, while the Germans have enormous influence and latitude, they have not taken responsibility for leadership. The prime reason for this gap beween ideology and structure, Markovits and Reich suggest, lies in the politics of collective memory.

Italian Socialism: Between Politics and History

This collection of essays on the history and condition of Italian socialism celebrates its achievements and analyses its downfall. The book traces the Italian Socialist party from its birth in the late 19th century, through the crisis brought on by Italian Fascism, into postwar democracy.

The Roots of West German Postwar Democracy: The American Contribution, 1945-1952.

The Roots of West German Postwar Democracy: The American Contribution, 1945-1952.

IV What Social Studies Education should be? : from the Perspective of Post-War Democracy in Japan

IV What Social Studies Education should be? : from the Perspective of Post-War Democracy in Japan

Work Rules, Wages, and Single Status: The Shaping of the ‘Japanese Employment System’

The status hierarchy in Japanese enterprises collapsed during the tumultuous years of ‘total war’ and post-war democracy, and the ‘Japanese employment system’ was greatly affected by the ‘white-collarisation of blue-collar workers’. This transformation can be seen through changes in the work rules and wages systems at Hitachi Electric from the 1930s to the 1950s. The labour ideology of the wartime planned economy, which saw enterprises as ‘production communities’ and assumed equality between white- and blue-collar workers, challenged the nature of employment relations. As the experience of the post-war union movement reveals, this wartime ideology exerted a pervasive influence on Japanese labour, and, during the US Occupation, it forced widespread, ‘democratic’ reforms on enterprise management. In consequence, the main elements of the Japanese employment system were formed and reinforced during the 1950s and 1960s.

The politics of programmatic renewal: Postwar experiences in Britain and Germany

The reform efforts of postwar British and German social democracy resulted in very different outcomes. The absence of a legislative record in government was only the most obvious reason why the German party showed greater flexibility. Widely different reasoning about the likelihood of electoral success and the need to pursue a creative coalition strategy also invigorated the cause of programmatic change. At the same time, the personalities and tactics of party reformers; the formal constitution of domestic politics; and the roles played by Britain and the Federal Republic in Cold War Europe further diminished or enhanced the chances of programmatic change.

Japan, Incorporated and Postwar Democracy

As a thesis, Japan, Incorporated is not of Japanese design. Back in the late 1960s when Japan rose to be the second largest economic power, ranking next to the United States in the free world and ahead of West Germany in terms of GNP while continuing to surpass a number of Western nations in per capita national income, with its productive force in major industrial products already at the top level in the world, Japan observers abroad and foreign journalists who were interested in the superb growth performance of the postwar Japanese economy noted that Japan, Incorporated represented the system of close-knit cooperation between government and business which is at the core of Japan's outstanding economic growth.

The Liberalistic Tradition in Japan and Marxism

The postwar sociology in Japan done by Takeshi Fukutake and other sociologists has developed under the slogan of modernization and democratization. There obviously has been ample liberal spirit in it ; unsimilar to “bourgeois sociology” begun by A. Comte, and moreover the Japanese sociology owns scientific aspect which could not be seen in his. Now, how do we understand the character of this positive sociology in relation to the so-called “postwar democracy” ? Moreover the problem offered by Masao Maruyama who is one of the opinion leaders of “postwar democracy” has not been fully solved yet. The flow of liberalizm from Yukichi Fukuzawa to Katsunan Kuga has been inherited by Katsunan Kuga, Nyozekan Hasegawa, Kanji Maruyama (Masao's father) and Masao Maruyama in order. Masao has possessed the tradition of the best and original liberalism. Observing the Era of Taisho democracy, the thought in Nyozekan Hasegawa or Manabu Sano, who later became a “glorious delegate” of the Japanese Comunist Party, has vivid sociological conception and theory. Former period of Sano's Marxism was “bourgeois sociology” itself, and, so that he made up his mind to convert it, Nyozekan's view of society was unique in those days - it could present a theoretical united front with Marxism. After 1933, the liberalism of Nyozekan Hasegawa, Kanji Maruyama or others has been weakened its spirit of resistance. It could not, therefore, overthrow the fascism. The postwar liberalists recognized this point, advocated “postwar democracy”, and postwar positive sociology, also, were founded on it. So that criticizm of Marxism in Japan should have the point of view and recognition in this respect.

Individualized Living in a Post-War Democracy

Individualized Living in a Post-War Democracy

Youth Education and Postwar Democracy

Youth Education and Postwar Democracy