Postwar Western Europe Research Articles

The British Occupation and the Making of Democracy in Italy and Germany, 1943–1949

AbstractOver the past two decades, historians have become increasingly fascinated by the question of what enabled the emergence of a stable model of democracy in post-war Western Europe, characterized by the persistence of pre-war elites and top-down forms of decision-making. This article reveals the importance of the British occupations during and after the Second World War in fostering this model of democracy. It does so by comparing and weaving together British occupation strategies in Germany and Italy between 1943 and 1949. Based on a novel examination of archival sources, it demonstrates that British ruling strategies influenced the form of democracy that emerged in these two states. As such, the article reveals the centrality of ‘indirect rule’ practices and their multifaceted impact. Building on imperial precedents, the occupations were primarily run through pre-existing local elites who commanded authority and influence amongst the population. The article argues that this choice explains why the British produced, first, functioning occupation regimes and, subsequently, contributed to the emergence of remarkably stable democracies. At the same time, however, this ruling strategy aided the creation of political regimes that were elite-led and that strongly limited popular participation, leaving many democratic aspirations unfulfilled.

Housing policy in the social and economic sphere. Housing policy relationships and other specific policies

Abstrakt Housing policy aspiring to have a general social impact, subtracting from the scale of the state, like any other policy in this scope, is conducted in the European Union countries by the public sector. This sector remains a significant point of reference for this policy. The activity of the public sector in the countries of post-war Western Europe varies in intensity over time and is carried out at different spatial levels - also in relation to housing. The public sector has been subject to a tendency towards apparent self-limitation for at least the last four decades. This occurs mainly by reducing the importance of the state and its agencies in socio-economic development. Housing policy is one of the important sectoral policies of the state - including the government and local authorities - engaging public entities, political and social organizations and private entities to achieve the main and long-term goals in the area of housing, which are: creating conditions for purchasing or renting apartments by all citizens; ensuring the availability of the housing stock, i.e. implementing an appropriate scale of housing investments using primarily the market mechanism, and supporting the appropriate quality of the housing stock throughout the entire period of use of the property.

Peer-to-peer counselling and emotional guidance on infertility in Britain and Belgium (1970s–1980s)

In the wake of sexual and reproductive health counselling in postwar Western Europe, emotional guidance on infertility was as yet neither readily recognised nor available. In this article, we show...

CAP(공동농업정책) 수립 배경과 과정

This article aims to describe the background and process of establishing the CAP(Common Agricultural Policy), which is the most important concern of the early Community of the EEC and has a symbolic status as the first common policy of the EEC. The period of research is from the 1950s to the 1960s. Although CAP negotiations officially began in 1958, there is a reason for extending the period of research to the 1950s. The key challenges that Western European agricultural policies tried to solve after World War II remained at the time of establishing the CAP, and the CAP's goals were not much different from those of post-war Western European agricultural policies. Therefore, the subject of this article is largely divided into two categories. The first topic is the discussion of the establishment of a failed agricultural community at the Western European level, which was attempted in the early 1950s to solve the agricultural problems in post-war Western Europe. The second topic concerns the historical process from the mid-1950s to the birth of the CAP in the 1960s, discussed by the six founding countries of the EEC.

The French connection at the Council of Europe: éducation permanente as a pan-European policy repertoire

ABSTRACT This paper examines transnational circulation of political and pedagogical ideas associated with éducation permanente with particular reference to post-war Western Europe. It offers a socio-historical reconstruction of pan-European dissemination and reception of policy repertoires articulated by governmental and non-governmental policy actors. It focuses on advocacy regarding permanent education as a pan-European repertoire associated with the Council of Europe during the 1960s and 1970s. The paper explores involvement of French and other francophone nationals in circulatory regimes, who were engaged in mediating partisan reform aspirations, exchange of information, and dissemination of innovative practices at national, transnational, and pan-European levels. The more specific focus of this paper addresses participation of ‘rooted cosmopolitans’ in policy formation, who are defined as policy actors rooted in specific national contexts, but who engage in regular activities involving their participation in transnational networks. The conclusions call for further research into circulatory regimes at local, sub-national, regional, national, bilateral, transnational, and pan-European during the 1960s and 1970s. Such research should focus on revisiting different expert, reformist, missionary, and militant networks responsible for building peripatetic ‘scholar-militant-activist’ coalitions that historically contributed to pan-European policy repertoires seeking to mobilise citizens to participate in the unfinished political project of pan-European cultural democracy.

Neoliberalizing state spaces in postwar Western Europe: The emergence of a new integrative regime of sovereignty

Contrary to recurrent statements that neoliberalism was implemented from the late 1970s in the United Kingdom and United States, this article shows how in fact, this political ideology was rolled out in Western Europe much earlier, in the years following World War II. The experiences of Italy, West Germany and France reveal how some neoliberal reformers took advantage of postwar geopolitical crises to impulse a new spatial regime of sovereignty based on macroregional economic integration and submission of domestic policies to international economic competition. Far from being hegemonic, this neoliberal opening up of state spaces is implemented within the framework of a composite, flexible and ever evolving policy regime. A multifactorial and complex explanatory framework is used to show how neoliberalization in Western Europe takes the shape of a systemic process of macro-regional economic integration.

폴란드 체제 전환 30년 결산

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the economic, social, and political changes in Poland over the past 30 years since the transformation in 1989, and at the same time to examine the biggest challenges that Poland has to solve in the short and medium term. In making this assessment, various indices and figures are referenced as The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal for the transformation, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development for the transition to market economy and economic freedom, and the Gross Domestic Product(GDP) and GDP per capita for economic development. Based on the results of the basic analysis presented in this paper, including comparisons with France, Romania, Germany, the United States and the Visegrad Group countries, it was possible to conclude that the results of the Polish transformation over 30 years were positive. The achievements and success of Poland after the transformation, so-called Third Republic were even compared to ‘the glorious thirty years’ in the history of post-war Western Europe. In conclusion, it seems that the success of Poland’s economic development over the medium and short-term will depend on the quality improvement and improvement of existing system and orders, respect for democratic laws and principles, and how to avoid the middle-income country trap.

Freedom to Want: The Politics of Food and the Projection of American Abundance in Postwar Western Europe, 1945 to 1960

Freedom to Want: The Politics of Food and the Projection of American Abundance in Postwar Western Europe, 1945 to 1960

Claiming National Heritage: State Appropriation of Nazi Art Plunder in Postwar Western Europe

In the wake of the Second World War, cultural officers from the western Allied powers recovered several million objects plundered by the Nazis – works of art, Judaica, fine furniture, collectible books and archive collections. Recent books and films have popularized the history of the heroic art recovery effort, but less well-known is the story of what happened to objects that were never returned to rightful owners. In France, Belgium and the Netherlands, postwar governments selected the best of the unclaimed objects and distributed them to public museums, ministries, embassies and other state buildings. This public use of recovered art quietly endured until the 1990s, when heightened awareness of Holocaust-era assets led to greater public and press scrutiny and an increase in restitution claims. This article examines the origins of postwar art custodianships in a comparative analysis of French, Belgian and Dutch restitution policies. The comparison reveals national differences in the scope of looting operations and postwar restitution policies, yet the broad contours of each government’s approach to ownerless art are remarkably similar. In all three cases the custodianships continued the long-term dispossession of Jewish owners wrought by the Nazis and their collaborators.

The Ukrainian Catholic Policymaking and Propaganda in the Postwar Western Europe (1919)

The Ukrainian Catholic Policymaking and Propaganda in the Postwar Western Europe (1919)

‘Two children to make ends meet’: the ideal family size, parental responsibilities and costs of children on two sides of the Iron Curtain during the post-war fertility decline

One of the major corollaries of the post-war fertility boom and decline is that two-child families became common across Europe after the 1970s. Despite the general agreement on the convergence of fertility trends, there is still little understanding of how this change took place in a comparative perspective of Western and Eastern Europe, which at that time were characterised by Cold War tensions of different ideological regimes. This study addresses this aspect by focusing on individual decisions around childbearing, child-rearing and family size. Based on 104 oral histories from Switzerland and Ukraine, this study illuminates that the urban setting provided parents with a similar set of constraints and opportunities, which eventually resulted in strikingly similar perceptions of the costs of childrearing on two sides of the Iron Curtain. Individuals’ motives to postpone first birth in Switzerland and second birth in Ukraine rested on a similar aspiration to invest in the well-being of children by ensuring material security for the family. This aim was increasingly achieved through female labour-force participation and adoption of modern contraception – the pill in Switzerland and abortion in Ukraine. While the timing of returning to the labour market and the share of women working after entering parenthood might have varied across the two contexts, a good mother became increasingly defined in both contexts in terms of providing emotionally and financially for her children. Although the introduction of modern birth control methods allowed couples to plan family size more carefully, it also made Swiss and Ukrainian women increasingly carry the major costs and actual burden of birth control. Altogether, this study challenges the common assumption around the persistence of strikingly different demographic realities in post-war Western and Eastern Europe by uncovering the mechanisms behind the stabilisation of family size around the two-child family ideal.

Consumer Modernity as Cultural Translation

Abstract European emigres of the 1930s and 1940s played a prominent role in multidirectional transatlantic knowledge transfers. Using the example of consumer researchers and commercial designers, this article shows that the practices of American mass consumption at mid-century were shaped by transnational flows of knowledge at a fundamental level. The subsequent translation of marketing practices to post-war Western Europe, so-called Americanization, was similarly influenced by former emigres as cultural brokers. Analyzing the transnational construction of marketing knowledge in design and consumer psychology, the essay provides concrete empirical evidence for the concept of reciprocal “Westernization.”

The development of public relations in dictatorships — Southern and Eastern European perspectives from 1945 to 1990

The progressive version of public relations history present it as a by-product of pluralist political systems or a democratic dividend. It has been claimed that public relations thrives within open media systems and market economies but struggles in highly controlled governmental systems (dictatorships, juntas, and closed economies). This paper considers how political history and political systems affected the formation of public relations practices in regions of Europe that, after 1945, were under military dictatorships (Spain and Portugal), a military junta (Greece) and were contained in the Soviet bloc. Using comparative history methodology, the notion that public relations operates solely in democracies is challenged, although it is conceded that practice thrived in post-war Western Europe but struggled to develop in parts of southern and eastern Europe.

Three decades of populist radical right parties in Western Europe: So what?

[Three decades of populist radical right parties in Western Europe: So what?] The populist radical right constitutes the most successful party family in post-war Western Europe. Many accounts in both academia and the media warn of the growing influence of populist radical right parties, the so-called right turn of European politics, but few provide empirical evidence of it. This article by Cas Mudde provides a first comprehensive analysis of the alleged effects of the populist radical right on the people, parties, policies and polities of Western Europe. The conclusions are sobering. The effects are largely limited to the broader immigration issue, and even here populist radical right parties should be seen as catalysts rather than initiators. Despite their limited impact there is still reason to believe that the populist radical right parties might increase their influence in the near future. But even in the unlikely event that these parties will become major players in West European politics, it is unlikely that this will lead to a fundamental transformation of the political system. The populist radical right is, according to Mudde, not a normal pathology of European democracy, unrelated to its basic values, but a pathological normalcy , which strives for the radicalisation of mainstream values. Publication history: Translation of the article “Three decades of populist radical right parties in Western Europe: So what?” from European Journal of Political Research , volume 52, number 1 2013 (DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6765.2012.02065.x ). (Published 18 April 2016) Citation: Mudde, Cas (2016) “Tre decennier av populistiska radikalhögerpartier i Västeuropa”, in Det vita fältet III. Samtida forskning om högerextremism , special issue of Arkiv. Tidskrift för samhällsanalys , issue 5, pp. 67–91. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.5.3

DEMOCRACY AS A CONTESTED CONCEPT IN POST-WAR WESTERN EUROPE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF POLITICAL DEBATES IN FRANCE, WEST GERMANY, AND ITALY

ABSTRACTThis article explores how political parties in France, West Germany, and Italy conceptualized democracy and challenged the conceptions of democracy of their political adversaries between the end of the 1940s and the early 1960s. It studies from a comparative perspective the different conceptions of democracy held by Christian democrat, Left-wing, and Gaullist political actors and shows how these diverged on key issues such as the economic system, foreign policy, the separation of powers, electoral systems, and the use of state institutions in the defence of democracy against anti-democratic forces. In this way, the article reveals how in the first fifteen years after the Second World War, government and opposition parties disputed each other's democratic credentials and political legitimacy, and it thereby reconsiders the claim that there existed a broad consensus on the meaning of democracy among political elites in post-war Western Europe. It is argued that these different conceptions of democracy only started to converge after they had clashed during political crises at the turn of the 1960s in all three states. This study thereby contributes to an enhanced understanding the formation of the post-war democratic order in Western Europe.

Transatlantic Functionalism: New Deal Models and European Integration

For many advocates of European integration in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the seeming example of technocratic independence under the New Deal offered a justification for the delegation of regulatory power to autonomous supranational bodies. The New Deal represented, from this perspective, the triumph of “functionalist” governance--that is, governance that evolved as a function of the problems it sought to address, rather than being determined by seemingly outdated constitutional categories (“separation of powers” in the purported case of the New Deal, “national sovereignty” in European integration). The irony, of course, was that Roosevelt’s New Deal was much less receptive, both in principle and practice, to the sort of technocratic independence that these advocates believed to be inevitable and desirable in the case of integration. Indeed, consistent with a more nuanced understanding of the New Deal model, European integration would eventually secure a durable institutional existence only after being brought more directly under the shared control and oversight of the national executives of the member states. Contrary to expectations of functionalist (and later so-called neofunctionalist) theorists, governance beyond the state in postwar Western Europe did not evolve merely as a consequence of functional demands for technocratic independence. Rather, two additional dimensions of change also proved decisive: the political--or the defense of existing institutional advantages and/or the struggle to realize new ones; and the cultural--or the mobilization of conceptions of “right” or legitimate governance in the face of purported functional and political pressures for change. As a consequence of the interplay of all three dimensions--functional, political, and cultural--European integration ultimately settled on a form of governance in which the political oversight and control of national executives played a decisive role, a feature of European supranationalism that persists to this day. Even if a measure of supranational technocratic autonomy was broadly recognized as functionally necessary to the European project, national executives worked successfully to preserve significant institutional advantages in the integration process by mobilizing conceptions of legitimacy that, for better or worse, remain wedded to national institutions to a significant degree. It was through national executive oversight--eventually supplemented by national parliamentary and national judicial oversight--that integration has been able to maintain a connection to conceptions of democratic and constitutional legitimacy on the national level, even as functional pressures seemed to warrant a shift in governance to autonomous supranational bodies.

American Labor’s Global Ambassadors: The International History of the AFL–CIO during the Cold War, by Robert Anthony Waters Jr. and Geert van Goethem, eds.

Robert Anthony Waters Jr. and Geert van Goethem, eds. American Labor's Global Ambassadors: The International History of the AFL-CIO during the Cold War New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 316 pp., $1 15.00 (cloth) ISBN 9781 137360212The foreign policy of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, particularly with regard to the rebuilding of postwar Western Europe, the Cold War, and the decolonization struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, is often overlooked. Its omission from the historiography on these subjects is surprising given the prominent and often controversial role that the AFL-CIO played. Historians' neglect of the AFL-CIO's international role has been typical of the treatment of many national or international labour organizations. However, the situation is starting to improve. There are now a number of excellent studies that examine the history of international labour organizations, including the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the International Labour Organization.1 Arguably the emergence of these studies is indicative of a broader trend within the historiography of the twentieth century, with historians paying increasing attention to the role of international organizations, the emergence of ideas and discourses relating to global governance and human rights, and the harnessing of technical expertise to development initiatives.2American Labor's Global Ambassadors, a collection of essays edited by Robert Anthony Waters Jr. and Geert van Goethem, is a welcome addition to this literature. Based on a series of papers presented at a workshop in October 2011, the essays are meticulously researched, drawing on a range of archival sources, including the George Meany Memorial Archives, the International Institute for Social History, and the National Archives and Record Administration, College Park. The book is divided into five parts. Three of the parts are geographic in focus, examining the AFL-CIO's involvement in (part II), Latin America and the Caribbean (part III), and Africa and Asia (part IV), while the remaining sections (parts I and V) analyze the AFL-CIO's international role from a more general, global perspective.In part I, Geert van Goetham's article, From dollars to deeds, investigates the origins of the AFL's international activism. According to van Goetham, the AFL's engagement with international affairs was very haphazard during the first half of the twentieth century, veering between short bouts of intense activity and sustained periods of international isolation (10). The 1930s, he argues, marked a turning point in the AFL's international policy, when the United States' decision to join the ILO and fears of being usurped by its erstwhile domestic rival, the CIO, forced the AFL to take greater interest in international affairs (12). As well changing domestic and international factors, van Goetham documents how the most militant US unions, which often included Jewish and Italian immigrants, exploited ethnic networks in both the US and to collect funds in order to support refugees, distribute anti-fascist propaganda, and provide material assistance to those oppressed by authoritarian regimes in (12-13). As subsequent chapters in the volume demonstrate, this desire to fight totalitarianism among US labour leaders is critical to understanding the direction of AFL-CIO foreign policy, with many within the organization regarding postwar efforts to contain the global spread of communism simply an extension of the struggle against fascism during the 1930s and 1940s.In part II, essays by Barrett Dower and Alessandro Brogi examine the American labour movement's attempts to combat communist influence in postwar France and Italy, respectively. In both cases the American labour movement did not serve as a mere corollary to US plans of political and economic stabilization in Europe (Brogi, 60). US trade unions actually acted ahead of the State Department, recognizing that the labour movement would constitute a key Cold War battleground. …

An emerging anti-reform green front? Farm interest groups fighting the ‘Agriculture 1980’ project, 1968–72

Ten years after the creation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the so-called Mansholt Plan was the first attempt at radically transforming European agriculture and modernising agricultural structures. Drawing upon archives of national and Community-level farm interest groups as well as records of the European Commission, this article analyses the reactions of farm interest groups to the Mansholt Plan and their strategies to oppose it between 1968 and 1972. It explores the resistance of farmers and their professional organisations to agricultural change. In particular, the article sheds new light on the reasons behind the spectacular failure of the plan and examines the long-term consequences of that failure for farm interest groups, the Commission and the member-states. It scrutinises initial reactions from farm organisations, examines the debates over the family farm (a core economic and cultural element of European agriculture), and discusses the national and transnational lobbying and protest strategies used by farmers to oppose the plan. The article contributes to a deeper understanding of the origins of transnational societal mobilisation in post-war Western Europe and highlights the impact of national and European interest groups in EC-level policy-making.

Is morality policy different? Institutional explanations for post-war Western Europe

Although there has been increasing recognition that morality policy in Western democracies is a distinctive field of study, many analyses are relatively narrow in issues and jurisdictions. This contribution examines broad empirical patterns for five morality policy issues across 18 West European democracies since World War II. The issues analysed are abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, assisted reproductive technology (ART, including stem cell research) and same-sex marriage. Which of two prominent institutional theories of morality policy, policy type and two worlds, help explain morality policy processes? The results indicate that morality policy processes do differ from the usual ones of parliamentary government, and that important differences are captured by the religious/secular division of party systems, depending on which countries are considered for each category.

Three decades of populist radical right parties in Western Europe: So what?

AbstractThe populist radical right constitutes the most successful party family in postwar Western Europe. Many accounts in both academia and the media warn of the growing influence of populist radical right parties (PRRPs), the so‐called ‘verrechtsing’ (or right turn) of European politics, but few provide empirical evidence of it. This lecture provides a first comprehensive analysis of the alleged effects of the populist radical right on the people, parties, policies and polities of Western Europe. The conclusions are sobering. The effects are largely limited to the broader immigration issue, and even here PRRPs should be seen ascatalystsrather than initiators, who are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the introduction of stricter immigration policies. The lecture ends by providing various explanations for the limited impact of PRRPs, but it is also argued that populist parties are not destined for success in opposition and failure in government. In fact, there are at least three reasons why PRRPs might increase their impact in the near future: the tabloidisation of political discourse; the aftermath of the economic crisis; and the learning curve of PRRPs. Even in the unlikely event that PRRPs will become major players in West European politics, it is unlikely that this will lead to a fundamental transformation of the political system. PRRPs are not a normal pathology of European democracy, unrelated to its basic values, but a pathological normalcy, which strives for the radicalisation of mainstream values.