Communism and the Emergence of Democracy

Communism and the Emergence of Democracy PDF Author: Harald Wydra
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139462180
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Before democracy becomes an institutionalised form of political authority, the rupture with authoritarian forms of power causes deep uncertainty about power and outcomes. This book connects the study of democratisation in eastern Europe and Russia to the emergence and crisis of communism. Wydra argues that the communist past is not simply a legacy but needs to be seen as a social organism in gestation, where critical events produce new expectations, memories and symbols that influence meanings of democracy. By examining a series of pivotal historical events, he shows that democratisation is not just a matter of institutional design, but rather a matter of consciousness and leadership under conditions of extreme and traumatic incivility. Rather than adopting the opposition between non-democratic and democratic, Wydra argues that the communist experience must be central to the study of the emergence and nature of democracy in (post-) communist countries.

Communism and the Emergence of Democracy

Communism and the Emergence of Democracy PDF Author: Harald Wydra
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139462180
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Before democracy becomes an institutionalised form of political authority, the rupture with authoritarian forms of power causes deep uncertainty about power and outcomes. This book connects the study of democratisation in eastern Europe and Russia to the emergence and crisis of communism. Wydra argues that the communist past is not simply a legacy but needs to be seen as a social organism in gestation, where critical events produce new expectations, memories and symbols that influence meanings of democracy. By examining a series of pivotal historical events, he shows that democratisation is not just a matter of institutional design, but rather a matter of consciousness and leadership under conditions of extreme and traumatic incivility. Rather than adopting the opposition between non-democratic and democratic, Wydra argues that the communist experience must be central to the study of the emergence and nature of democracy in (post-) communist countries.

Communism and Democracy

Communism and Democracy PDF Author: Mike Makin-Waite
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781910448762
Category : Communism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description


Christian Democracy and the Fall of Communism

Christian Democracy and the Fall of Communism PDF Author: Michael Gehler
Publisher: Leuven University Press
ISBN: 9462702160
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
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.

Assault on Democracy

Assault on Democracy PDF Author: Kurt Weyland
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108844332
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
Why did democratization suffer reversal during the interwar years, while fascism and authoritarianism spread across many European countries?

Communism Versus Democracy

Communism Versus Democracy PDF Author: Nasi︠a︡ Kralevska
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789549257113
Category : Bulgaria
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Written by the acclaimed Bulgarian journalist and writer Nassya Kralevska-Owens, with introduction by Professor Mark Kramer, Director of the Project for Cold War Studies at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, this is a brilliant, eye-opening chronicle of Bulgaria's history during the second half of the 20th century. The book is the first in a series of monographs published by the American Research Center in Sofia which deal with Bulgarian history from prehistory through the modern age; these volumes are currently in preparation. Praise for the book: Communism versus Democracy illustrates with brilliant clarity that communist rhetoric about the good of mankind only meant "the masses" as an impersonal abstraction, while in fact the communists preached and practiced profound disregard for the individual. Those who wish to know about the Cold War, Eastern Europe, and Bulgaria in the second half of the 20th century will profit enormously from reading this book. - Prof. Kevin Clinton, Cornell University; President and Co-founder, American Research Center in Sofia (ARCS).

Complications

Complications PDF Author: Claude Lefort
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231133005
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Complications: Communism and the Dilemmas of Democracyties together the central concerns of the work of Claude Lefort over the past half-century. A pivotal figure in French thought, Lefort studied under Maurice Merleau-Ponty, cofounded with Cornelius Castoriadis the influential journal Socialisme ou Barbarie, and famously engaged in a heated debate with Jean-Paul Sartre over the Soviet Union and Communist parties in the West. He has influenced generations of political thinkers and throughout his career has offered invaluable leftist, non-communist critiques of both liberalism and Communism. It is the prevailing belief that the death of communism was a victory for liberal democracy. In Complications, however, Lefort challenges this interpretation and provides new ways of understanding the rise and fall of the Soviet Union and the Communist phenomenon. Lefort engages the work of prominent historians Martin Malia and Francois Furet and shows how their emphasis on "illusion" and ideology led to their failure to understand the logic and workings of the Communist Party, and its impact on Soviet society, and the reasons why so many in the West had Communist sympathies. He also maintains that those who regard the end of Communism as the triumph of markets and "freedom" restrict the scope of democratic thought and the possibility of greater social equality. Lefort contends that Communism must be seen as part of a larger history of modernity and believes that the diagnosis of its death is dangerous to the future of democracy. In the tradition of Hannah Arendt and Raymond Aron, Lefort complicates the pieties of historical understanding and offers a new approach to thinking about totalitarianism and a more vital democracy.

‘True Democracy’ as a Prelude to Communism

‘True Democracy’ as a Prelude to Communism PDF Author: Alexandros Chrysis
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783319575407
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book constitutes a critical intervention in the theoretical discussion over the political relationship between democracy and communism. Shedding light on the philosophical origins of the democracy debate, it draws a clear demarcation line between liberalism and republicanism, arguing that after rejecting the former and supporting the latter, the young Marx endorsed 'true democracy' as a prelude to his forthcoming theory of communism. To this end, while following the dynamics of the Marxian history of political ideas and pre-communist theory of the state, the book takes into account the thought of a vast range of philosophers and political theorists, starting from the Ancient times (Aristotle), passing through the Age of Enlightenment (Spinoza, Rousseau), the German Idealist tradition (Hegel) the Young Hegelians’ Republicanism (Bauer, Ruge, Feuerbach), and reaching our own times (Arendt, Colletti, MacPherson, Castoriadis, Poulantzas). It will be of interest to students and scholars interested in the history of political thought, theories of democracy, and Marxism.

Central and East European Politics

Central and East European Politics PDF Author: Sharon L. Wolchik
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0742567346
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
"A useful text and reference book. These essays are at their best in serving both area study and political sociology."--Slavic Review --

The Development of Socialism, Social Democracy and Communism

The Development of Socialism, Social Democracy and Communism PDF Author: Mohamed Ismail Sabry
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1787433730
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
This book examines how socioeconomic and institutional factors shaped the development of Socialism and its two contending variants of Social Democracy and Communism, investigating why each of these factions enjoyed varying levels of popularity in different societies between 1840 and 1945.

End of History and the Last Man

End of History and the Last Man PDF Author: Francis Fukuyama
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416531785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
Ever since its first publication in 1992, the New York Times bestselling The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. "Profoundly realistic and important...supremely timely and cogent...the first book to fully fathom the depth and range of the changes now sweeping through the world." —The Washington Post Book World Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.