The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe

The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe

Author: Stathis N. Kalyvas

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 9780801483202

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Kalyvas also lays a foundation for a theory of the Christian Democratic phenomenon which would specify the conditions under which confessional parties succeed and would determine the impact of such parties, and the way they are formed, on politics and society.


What is Christian Democracy?

What is Christian Democracy?

Author: Carlo Invernizzi Accetti

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-10-03

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1108386156

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Christian Democratic actors and thinkers have been at the forefront of many of the twentieth century's key political battles - from the construction of the international human rights regime, through the process of European integration and the creation of postwar welfare regimes, to Latin American development policies during the Cold War. Yet their core ideas remain largely unknown, especially in the English-speaking world. Combining conceptual and historical approaches, Carlo Invernizzi Accetti traces the development of this ideology in the thought and writings of some of its key intellectual and political exponents, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. In so doing he sheds light on a number of important contemporary issues, from the question of the appropriate place of religion in presumptively 'secular' liberal-democratic regimes, to the normative resources available for building a political response to the recent rise of far-right populism.


The Path to Christian Democracy

The Path to Christian Democracy

Author: Noel D. Cary

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 9780674657830

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From the time of Bismarck's great rival Ludwig Windthorst to that of the first post-World War II Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, the Catholic community in Germany took a distinctive historical path. Although it was by no means free of authoritarian components, it was at times the most democratic pathway taken by organized political Catholicism anywhere in Europe. Challenging those who seek continuity in German history primarily in terms of its long march toward Nazism, this book crosses all the usual historical turning points from mid-nineteenth- to late-twentieth-century German history in search of the indigenous origins of postwar German democracy. Complementing recent studies of German Social Democracy, it links the postwar party system to the partisan traditions this new system transcended by documenting the attempts by reform-minded members of the old Catholic Center party to break out of the constraints of minority-group politics and form a democratic political party. The failure of those efforts before 1933 helped clear the way for Nazism, but their success after 1945 in founding the interdenominational Christian Democratic Union (CDU) helped tame political conservatism and allowed the emergence of the most stable democracy in contemporary Europe. Integrating those who needed to be integrated--the cultural and political conservatives--into a durable liberal order, this conservative yet democratic and interdenominational "catch-all" party broadened democratic sensibilities and softened the effect of religious tensions on the German polity and party system. By crossing traditional chronological divides and exploring the links between earlier abortive Catholic initiatives and the range of competing postwar visions of the new party system, this book moves Catholic Germany from the periphery to the heart of the issue of continuity in modern German history.


Christian Democracy and the Fall of Communism

Christian Democracy and the Fall of Communism

Author: Michael Gehler

Publisher: Leuven University Press

Published: 2019-11-20

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 9462702160

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Debates on the role of Christian Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe too often remain strongly tied to national historiographies. With the edited collection the contributing authors aim to reconstruct Christian Democracy’s role in the fall of Communism from a bird's-eye perspective by covering the entire region and by taking “third-way” options in the broader political imaginary of late-Cold War Europe into account. The book’s twelve chapters present the most recent insights on this topic and connect scholarship on the Iron Curtain’s collapse with scholarship on political Catholicism. Christian Democracy and the Fall of Communism offers the reader a two-fold perspective. The first approach examines the efforts undertaken by Western European actors who wanted to foster or support Christian Democratic initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe. The second approach is devoted to the (re-)emergence of homegrown Christian Democratic formations in the 1980s and 1990s. One of the volume’s seminal contributions lies in its documentation of the decisive role that Christian Democracy played in supporting the political and anti-political forces that engineered the collapse of Communism from within between 1989 and 1991.


Christian Democracy in Latin America

Christian Democracy in Latin America

Author: Scott Mainwaring

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 9780804745987

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Christian Democracy swept across parts of Latin America, gaining influence in Venezuela in the 1940s, Chile in the 1950s, El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1960s, and Costa Rica and Mexico in the 1980s. This book offers an overview of Christian Democracy in the region— underscoring its remarkable diversity—and examines the Christian Democratic organizations of Chile and Mexico, which are still major parties today. The concluding section analyzes the demise of formerly significant Christian Democratic parties in El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, and Venezuela. Christian Democracy in Latin America provides the definitive stufy of the nature, rise, and decline of Christian Democracy in Latin America. The book enriches the broader theoretical literature on political parties by highlighting the distinctive strategic dilemmas parties face, and the distinctive objectives they pursue, in contexts of fragile democracy or of authoritarian regimes.


Christian Democracy and the Origins of European Union

Christian Democracy and the Origins of European Union

Author: Wolfram Kaiser

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2011-03-03

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 9780521173971

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Major study of the role of European Christian democratic parties in the making of the European Union. It radically re-conceptualises European integration in long-term historical perspective as the outcome of partisan competition of political ideologies and parties and their guiding ideas for the future of Europe. Wolfram Kaiser takes a comparative approach to political Catholicism in the nineteenth century, Catholic parties in interwar Europe and Christian democratic parties in postwar Europe and studies these parties' cross-border contacts and co-ordination of policy-making. He shows how well networked party elites ensured that the origins of European Union were predominately Christian democratic, with considerable repercussions for the present-day EU. The elites succeeded by intensifying their cross-border communication and coordinating their political tactics and policy making in government. This is a major contribution to the new transnational history of Europe and the history of European integration.


Christianity and Democracy

Christianity and Democracy

Author: John W. De Gruchy

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1995-06

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 9780521458412

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The need for global democratisation is now widely recognised, but there is considerable debate about what this means and how it can be achieved. In this important study John de Gruchy examines the historic and contemporary roles of Christianity in the development of democracy. He traces the gestation of modern democracy in medieval Christendom, and then describes the virtual breakdown of the relationship as democracy becomes the polity of modernity. Five twentieth-century case studies - the USA, Nicaragua, sub-Saharan Africa, Germany and South Africa - demonstrate the extent to which ecumenical Christianity has begun to reconnect with democracy and act as its contemporary midwife. De Gruchy argues that democracy needs to rediscover its spiritual heritage, while Christianity needs to develop a theology adequate for its participation in the realisation of a just democratic world order.


Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy

Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy

Author: Jay P. Corrin

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2010-12-20

Total Pages: 633

ISBN-13: 0268159289

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Tracing the development of progressive Catholic approaches to political and economic modernization, Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy disputes standard interpretations of the Catholic response to democracy and modernity in the English-speaking world—particularly the conventional view that the Church was the servant of right-wing reactionaries and authoritarian, patriarchal structures. Starting with the writings of Bishop Wilhelm von Ketteler of Germany, the Frenchman Frédérick Ozanam, and England’s Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, whose pioneering work laid the foundation of the Catholic "third way," Corrin reveals a long tradition within Roman Catholicism that championed social activism. These visionary writers were the forerunners of Pope John XXIII’s aggiornamento, a call for Catholics to broaden their historical perspectives and move beyond a static theology fixed to the past. By examining this often overlooked tradition, Corrin attempts to confront the perception that Catholicism in the modern age has invariably been an institution of reaction that is highly suspicious of liberalism and progressive social reform. Catholic Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democracy charts the efforts of key Catholic intellectuals, primarily in Britain and the United States, who embraced the modern world and endeavored to use the legacies of their faith to form an alternative, pluralistic path that avoided both socialist collectivism and capitalism. In this sweeping volume, Corrin discusses the influences of Cecil and G. K. Chesterton, H. A. Reinhold, Hilaire Belloc, and many others on the development of Catholic social, economic, and political thought, with a special focus on Belloc and Reinhold as representatives of reactionary and progressive positions, respectively. He also provides an in-depth analysis of Catholic Distributists’ responses to the labor unrest in Britain prior to World War I and later, in the 1930s, to the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War and the forces of fascism and communism.


Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy

Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy

Author: David M. Elcott

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2021-05-01

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0268200599

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Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy highlights the use of religious identity to fuel the rise of illiberal, nationalist, and populist democracy. In Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy, David Elcott, C. Colt Anderson, Tobias Cremer, and Volker Haarmann present a pragmatic and modernist exploration of how religion engages in the public square. Elcott and his co-authors are concerned about the ways religious identity is being used to foster the exclusion of individuals and communities from citizenship, political representation, and a role in determining public policy. They examine the ways religious identity is weaponized to fuel populist revolts against a political, social, and economic order that values democracy in a global and strikingly diverse world. Included is a history and political analysis of religion, politics, and policies in Europe and the United States that foster this illiberal rebellion. The authors explore what constitutes a constructive religious voice in the political arena, even in nurturing patriotism and democracy, and what undermines and threatens liberal democracies. To lay the groundwork for a religious response, the book offers chapters showing how Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism can nourish liberal democracy. The authors encourage people of faith to promote foundational support for the institutions and values of the democratic enterprise from within their own religious traditions and to stand against the hostility and cruelty that historically have resulted when religious zealotry and state power combine. Faith, Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Democracy is intended for readers who value democracy and are concerned about growing threats to it, and especially for people of faith and religious leaders, as well as for scholars of political science, religion, and democracy.


In Pursuit of Justice

In Pursuit of Justice

Author: James W. Skillen

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13:

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This is a series of eight essays on diverse public policy concerns that asks the questions: What does racial justice, or environmental protection, or family policy look like when approached from a Christian-democratic perspective? And what about the civil-society questions of welfare, education, and political participation? The author, James W. Skillen, argues that the roots of a Christian-democratic approach are neither liberal nor conservative, but pluralistic, opening the way to a healthy regard for both social complexity and government's responsibility to uphold political community. Published in cooperation with the Center for Public Justice