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.

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.

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


‘True Democracy’ as a Prelude to Communism

‘True Democracy’ as a Prelude to Communism PDF Author: Alexandros Chrysis
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319575414
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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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.

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.

Communism and Democracy

Communism and Democracy PDF Author: Mike Makin-Waite
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781910448779
Category : Communism
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
On the centenary of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Mike Makin-Waite surveys the history of the communist movement, tracking its origins in the Enlightenment, and through nineteenth-century socialism to the emergence of Marxism and beyond. As we emerge from the long winter of neoliberalism, and the search is on for ideas that can help shape a contemporary popular socialism, some of the questions that have preoccupied socialist thinkers throughout left history are once more being debated. Should the left press for reform and work through the state or should it focus on protest and a critique of the whole system? Is it possible to expand the liberal idea of democracy to include economic democracy? Which alliances require too great a compromise and which can help secure future change? Arguments on questions such as these have been raging since the mid-nineteenth century, and were the basis of the split between Social Democrats and Communists in the aftermath of the First World War. Mike Makin-Waite believes that revisiting these debates can help us to avoid some of the mistakes made in the past, and find new solutions to some of these age-old concerns. His argument is that the democratic and liberal counter-currents that have always existed within the communist movement have much to offer the left project today. This unorthodox account therefore tracks an alternative history that includes nineteenth-century revisionists such as Karl Kautsky, Menshevik opponents of Bolshevik oppression in 1917, Popular Front critiques of sectarianism in the 1930s, communist support for 1968's Prague Spring, and the turn to Gramsci and Eurocommunism in the 1970s. The aim of Communism and Democracy: history, debates and potentials is to recover some of the hard-won insights of the critical communist tradition, in the belief that they can still be of service to the twenty-first-century left.

Between Dictatorship and Democracy

Between Dictatorship and Democracy PDF Author: Michael McFaul
Publisher: Carnegie Endowment
ISBN: 0870032909
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
For hundreds of years, dictators have ruled Russia. Do they still? In the late 1980s, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev launched a series of political reforms that eventually allowed for competitive elections, the emergence of an independent press, the formation of political parties, and the sprouting of civil society. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, these proto-democratic institutions endured in an independent Russia. But did the processes unleashed by Gorbachev and continued under Russian President Boris Yeltsin lead eventually to liberal democracy in Russia? If not, what kind of political regime did take hold in post-Soviet Russia? And how has Vladimir Putin's rise to power influenced the course of democratic consolidation or the lack thereof? Between Dictatorship and Democracy seeks to give a comprehensive answer to these fundamental questions about the nature of Russian politics.

From Leninism To Freedom

From Leninism To Freedom PDF Author: Margaret Latus Nugent
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042971551X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
This book stimulates inquiry into questions about how to facilitate and consolidate transitions from Leninism to market-oriented democracies. It allows readers to appreciate the diversity of opinion that exists on such questions as the causes for what happened and the prospects for the future.

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: 1787433749
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.

From a One-party State to Democracy

From a One-party State to Democracy PDF Author: Janina Frentzel-Zagórska
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789051835236
Category : Cultural pluralism
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description