This book uses constitutional analysis and theory to explore the transformation of Europe from the post-war era until the Euro-crisis. Authoritarian liberalism has developed over these years and, as the book suggests, is now perhaps reaching its limit. This book uses history and theory to reveal the EU's journey and highlight future challenges.
The history of modern Europe is often presented with the hindsight of present-day European integration, which was a genuinely liberal project based on political and economic freedom. Many other visions for Europe developed in the 20th century, however, were based on an idea of community rooted in pre-modern religious ideas, cultural or ethnic homogeneity, or even in coercion and violence. They frequently rejected the idea of modernity or reinterpreted it in an antiliberal manner. Anti-liberal Europe examines these visions, including those of anti-modernist Catholics, conservatives, extreme rightists as well as communists, arguing that antiliberal concepts in 20th-century Europe were not the counterpart to, but instead part of the process of European integration.
Since the Enlightenment, liberalism as a concept has been foundational for European identity and politics, even as it has been increasingly interrogated and contested. This comprehensive study takes a fresh look at the diverse understandings and interpretations of the idea of liberalism in Europe, encompassing not just the familiar movements, doctrines, and political parties that fall under the heading of “liberal” but also the intertwined historical currents of thought behind them. Here we find not an abstract, universalized liberalism, but a complex and overlapping configuration of liberalisms tied to diverse linguistic, temporal, and political contexts.
Why have neo-liberal economic ideas been so resilient since the 1980s, despite major intellectual challenges, crippling financial and political crises, and failure to deliver on their promises? Why do they repeatedly return, not only to survive but to thrive? This groundbreaking book proposes five lines of analysis to explain the dynamics of both continuity and change in neo-liberal ideas: the flexibility of neo-liberalism's core principles; the gaps between neo-liberal rhetoric and reality; the strength of neo-liberal discourse in debates; the power of interests in the strategic use of ideas; and the force of institutions in the embedding of neo-liberal ideas. The book's highly distinguished group of authors shows how these possible explanations apply across the most important domains - fiscal policy, the role of the state, welfare and labour markets, regulation of competition and financial markets, management of the Euro, and corporate governance - in the European Union and across European countries.
Though the fall of the Soviet Union opened the way for states in central and eastern Europe to join the world of market-oriented Western democracies, the expected transitions have not been as easy, common, or smooth as sometimes perceived. Rachel A. Epstein investigates how liberal ideas and practices are embedded in transitioning societies and finds that success or failure depends largely on creating a social context in which incentives held out by international institutions are viewed as symbols of an emerging Western identity in the affected country. Epstein first explains how a liberal worldview and institutions like the European Union, World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization go hand-in-hand and why Western nations assume that a broad and incremental program of incentives to join will encourage formerly authoritarian states to reform their political and economic systems. Using Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the Ukraine as case studies, she demonstrates the limits of conditionality in the face of national social perceptions and elucidates the three key points around which a consensus within the state must emerge before international institutions can expect liberalization: domestic officials must be uncertain about how changing policies will affect their interests; the status of international and domestic institutions must not be in jeopardy; and the proposed polices must seem credible. In making her case, Epstein cleverly bridges the gap between the rationalist and constructivist schools of thought. Offering new data on and fresh interpretations of reforming central bank policies, privatizing banks with foreign capital, democratizing civil-military relations, and denationalizing defense policy, In Pursuit of Liberalism extends well beyond the scope of previous book-length studies.
This book investigates how liberal parties have evolved over time as a party family, in a comparative perspective. Through a discussion of the applicability of the concept of party family to liberal parties, it gives a better picture of the development, challenges, and opportunities for liberal parties in Europe. The history of liberal parties in Europe is peculiar and the origins of the liberal family are not clearly defined. Liberal parties are still quite heterogeneous given the various meanings embraced in the idea of liberalism, including economic liberalism, cultural liberalism, progressivism, social-liberalism. Bringing together the best specialists engaged in the study of liberal parties, and with a two-levels perspective (comparative and case study), this book renews and expands our knowledge on the liberal party family in Europe. Four major themes are developed, linked to the four approaches of the concept of party family: electoral performances, participation to power, ideology and political program, and party organization. These themes are systematically developed in case studies, and in comparative chapters. Primarily aimed at scholars and students in comparative politics, this book should especially appeal to scholars in the fields of political parties and party systems, representation and elections, voting behavior, and public opinion.
This Book, A Classic By One Of The Outstanding Political Scientists Of The Twentieth Century Seeks To Take Account Of The Factors Through Which Liberalism, The Guiding Doctrine Of Western Civilization Emerged As A New Ideology To Meet The Needs Of A New World In Which Status Was Replaced By Contract As The Judicial Foundation Of Society, Science Began To Replace Religion As The Controlling Factor In Giving Shape To The Ideas Of Humanity.Liberalism Was Synonymous Of Freedom Since It Emerged As The Foe Of Privilege Conferred By Virtue Of Birth Or Creed. However, The Freedom It Sought Had No Universality, Since Its Practice Was Limited To Men Who Had Property To Defend. Liberalism Tried To Discover A System Of Fundamental Rights, Which The State Is Not Entitled To Invade; However, It Turned Out To Be More Urgent And More Ingenious In Exerting Them To Defend The Interests Of Property Than To Protect The Interest Of Propertyless. As Soon As It Sought To Effect Fundamental Transformation Of Institutions Whose Habits It Was Supposed To Inform, It Found That It Was The Prisoner Of The End, It Was Destined To Serve. Soon The Liberal Spirit Was Vandalized And What Ensued Was War And Devastation, Ironically In The Name Of Saving That Very Spirit.Although Written In 1936, This Work Appears Equally Relevant Today As It Helps To Understand The Difficulties Of Our Time.
This book considers the emergence of centre right parties in Eastern Europe following the fall of communism, focusing primarily on the case of the Czech Republic. Although the country with the strongest social democratic traditions in Eastern Europe, the Czech Republic also produced the region’s strongest and most durable party of the free market right in Václav Klaus’ Civic Democratic Party (ODS). Seán Hanley considers the different varieties of right-wing politics that emerged in post-communist Europe, exploring in particular detail the origins of the Czech neo-liberal right, tracing its genesis to the reactions of dissidents and technocrats to the collapse of 1960s reform communism. He argues that, rather than being shaped by distant historical legacies, the emergence of centre-right parties can best be understood by examining the responses of counter-elites, outside or marginal to the former communist party-state establishment, to the collapse of communism and the imperatives of market reform and decommunization. This volume goes on to consider the emergence of right-wing forces in the disintegrating Civic Forum movement in 1990, the foundation of the ODS, the right’s period in office under Klaus in 1992-97, and its subsequent divisions and decline. It concludes by analyzing the ideology of the Czech Right, and its growing euroscepticism.
Joao Carlos Espada's provocative survey of a group of key Anglo-American and European political thinkers argues that there is a distinctive, Anglo-American tradition of liberty that is one of the core pillars of the Free World. Giving a broad overview of the tradition through summaries of the careers and ideas of fourteen of its key thinkers, neglected despite having been tremendously influential in the tradition of liberty, the author engages with current set ideas about the meaning of 'liberal' and 'conservative' to offer an engaging, intellectual case for liberal democracy.
New Culture, New Right is the first English-language study of the identitarian movements presently reshaping the contours of European politics. The study's focus is Alain de Benoist's GRECE (Groupement de Recherche et d'Etude pour la Civilisation Européenne), which Paul Piccone of Telos described as the most interesting group of continental thinkers since the existentialists of the 1950s and which elsewhere is seen as the leading school of contemporary Right-wing thought. Made up of veterans from various nationalist, traditionalist, far Right, and regionalist movements, the GRECE began as an association of French intellectuals committed to restoring the crumbling cultural foundations of European life and identity. Due to the quality of its publications and its philosophically persuasive reformulation of the Right project, it attracted an immediate audience. By the late 1970s it had recruited an impressive array of Continental thinkers to its ranks. In Italy, Germany, Belgium, and a number of other European countries, there have since emerged organizations and publishing concerns either directly linked to the Paris-based GRECE or involved in analogous endeavors. As a result of these diffusions, GRECE-style identitarianism has come to form the chief ideological alternative to the regnant liberalism. The European New Right to which the GRECE gave birth is new, however, not in the modernist sense of being novel, but in the traditionalist sense of reappropriating an origin whose meaningful possibilities remain open for realization. Such a revolutionary return to Europe's roots has never seemed so urgent. After a half century under the liberal-democratic regimes imposed by the United States in 1945, Europeans now face extinction as a race and a culture. In opposition to the ethnocidal forces of the American Occupation and its European collaborators, New Rightists appeal to the primordial in their people's heritage, aiming to awake a spirit of resistance and renaissance in them. The result, as documented in this introduction to their ideas, is one of the most formidable critiques ever made of the liberal project. Michael O'Meara, Ph.D., studied social theory at the Ècoles des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and modern European history at the University of California. He is the author of Guillaume Faye and the Battle of Europe (2013), also published by Arktos.
