The triumph of what (if anything)? Rethinking political ideologies and political institutions in twentieth-century Europe

Research Note

Bibliographic Data

ID7889381
AuthorsJan-Werner Müller (0000-0002-4627-2509), Jan‐werner Müller (Princeton University, corresponding author)
Year2009
Volume14
Issue2
Pages211-226
Publication date2009-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Political Ideologies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1356-9317 • E-ISSN: 1469-9613
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13569310902925857
OpenAlexW1516833706
LanguageEN
Citations received13

This note explores new ways of thinking about the history of political thought in twentieth-century Europe. It argues that more attention ought to be paid to the interaction between political thought or imagination on the one hand and, on the other, actual political institutions as they were designed, sometimes destroyed, an often re-designed in the course of twentieth-century European history. With this comes a clearer focus on 'in-between figures' (such as public lawyers). The note then outlines an argument concerning the emergence—even triumph—of a particular set of institutions and normative ideas (or sometimes just intuitions) in Western Europe after 1945, a set that was largely extended to Southern as well as Eastern Europe towards the end of the century. What is summed up as a conception of constrained civilian democratic administrative statehood did not reflect any traditional 'ism' and constituted a genuinely new ideological configuration. Have you forgotten the other bankruptcies? What was Christianity doing in the various catastrophes of society? What became of Liberalism? What has Conservatism produced, in either its enlightened or its reactionary form? ... If we are indeed honestly to weigh out the bankruptcies of ideology, we shall have a long task ahead of us. Victor Serge Democracy has developed wherever the abstract appeal of the ideologue and the concrete experimentation of the practical man have worked together. A. D. Lindsay

Appeal · Argument (complex analysis · Classical liberalism · Conservatism · Democracy · Environmental ethics · Ideology · Liberalism · Normative · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Reactionary · Sociology · French Historical and Cultural Studies · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law · Philosophy · Political and Economic history of UK and US

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