Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States

Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States PDF Author: Kees van Kersbergen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139479202
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book radically revises established knowledge in comparative welfare state studies and introduces a new perspective on how religion shaped modern social protection systems. The interplay of societal cleavage structures and electoral rules produced the different political class coalitions sustaining the three welfare regimes of the Western world. In countries with proportional electoral systems the absence or presence of state–church conflicts decided whether class remained the dominant source of coalition building or whether a political logic not exclusively based on socio-economic interests (e.g. religion) was introduced into politics, particularly social policy. The political class-coalitions in countries with majoritarian systems, on the other hand, allowed only for the residual-liberal welfare state to emerge, as in the US or the UK. This book also reconsiders the role of Protestantism. Reformed Protestantism substantially delayed and restricted modern social policy. The Lutheran state churches positively contributed to the introduction of social protection programs.

Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States

Religion, Class Coalitions, and Welfare States PDF Author: Kees van Kersbergen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139479202
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book radically revises established knowledge in comparative welfare state studies and introduces a new perspective on how religion shaped modern social protection systems. The interplay of societal cleavage structures and electoral rules produced the different political class coalitions sustaining the three welfare regimes of the Western world. In countries with proportional electoral systems the absence or presence of state–church conflicts decided whether class remained the dominant source of coalition building or whether a political logic not exclusively based on socio-economic interests (e.g. religion) was introduced into politics, particularly social policy. The political class-coalitions in countries with majoritarian systems, on the other hand, allowed only for the residual-liberal welfare state to emerge, as in the US or the UK. This book also reconsiders the role of Protestantism. Reformed Protestantism substantially delayed and restricted modern social policy. The Lutheran state churches positively contributed to the introduction of social protection programs.

What is Christian Democracy?

What is Christian Democracy? PDF Author: Carlo Invernizzi Accetti
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108386156
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Get Book Here

Book Description
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 Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe

The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe PDF Author: Stathis N. Kalyvas
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801483202
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Christian Democracy in Europe Since 1945

Christian Democracy in Europe Since 1945 PDF Author: Michael Gehler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135753857
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is the first to reveal the roles of the Christian Democratic parties in postwar Europe, systematically and from a pan-European perspective.

Christian Democracy Across the Iron Curtain

Christian Democracy Across the Iron Curtain PDF Author: Piotr H. Kosicki
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783319640860
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is the first scholarly exploration of how Christian Democracy kept Cold War Europe’s eastern and western halves connected after the creation of the Iron Curtain in the late 1940s. Christian Democrats led the transnational effort to rebuild the continent’s western half after World War II, but this is only one small part of the story of how the Christian Democratic political family transformed Europe and defied the nascent Cold War’s bipolar division of the world. The first section uses case studies from the origins of European integration to reimagine Christian Democracy’s long-term significance for a united Europe. The second shifts the focus to East-Central Europeans, some exiled to Western Europe, some to the USA, others remaining in the Soviet Bloc as dissidents. The transnational activism they pursued helped to ensure that, Iron Curtain or no, the boundary between Europe’s west and east remained permeable, that the Cold War would not last and that Soviet attempts to divide the continent permanently would fail. The book’s final section features the testimony of three key protagonists. This book appeals to a wide range of audiences: undergraduate and graduate students, established scholars, policymakers (in Europe and the Americas) and potentially also general readerships interested in the Cold War or in the future of Europe.

Italy's Christian Democracy

Italy's Christian Democracy PDF Author: Rosario Forlenza
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192603698
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 397

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first comprehensive study of Italian Christian Democracy in English, Italy's Christian Democracy unravels the encounter between Catholicism and democracy from pre-unification Italy in the eighteenth century to the near-present. Forlenza and Thomassen put the triumphant emergence of the Christian Democratic political party that ruled Italy from 1948 to 1994 into historical perspective. With a focus on critical moments of modern Italian history – the Enlightenment and French Revolution, the Risorgimento, World War I, the fascist period, World War II, the post-war Republic – Italy's Christian Democracy demonstrates the often-dramatic ways in which Catholic thinkers, from laymen to priests and bishops, sought to interpret and direct democratic thought and practice in line with Catholic ethics. The Christian Democracy was much more than reactionary politics – namely a sincere attempt to integrate a religious worldview into modern politics. Contrary to a purely secular reading, the authors demonstrate that the Catholic embrace of political modernity and democracy emerged as a historically significant alternative to both fascism and socialism, liberalism and conservativism, attempting to re-anchor democracy, justice, and freedom in a religiously argued ethos. Italy's Christian Democracy contributes to existing scholarship by stressing two interrelated aspects crucial for a better understanding of the role that Catholicism and Christian Democracy have played in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the political dimension of transcendence and spirituality and the transformative power of historical experiences and events. The narrative considers the religious and spiritual impulse behind Christian democratic thought, framing Christian Democracy as a distinct form of "political spirituality". Offering a novel historical narrative, Italy's Christian Democracy stresses the contemporary relevance of the nexus between Christianity and modern politics: the current spread of identity politics and the increasing use of religion in political and public discourse, recently appropriated by new populist parties and movements, in Italy and beyond.

From Fascism to Democracy

From Fascism to Democracy PDF Author: Robert Ventresca
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802087683
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Get Book Here

Book Description
This text tells the story of the birth of the post-war Italian political system through the lens of a single event: the Italian national election of 1948. It is a story about the fall of Fascism and the achievements of the Italian Resistance, and Italian political culture.

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

Get Book Here

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.

Christian Democratic Parties in Europe Since the End of the Cold War

Christian Democratic Parties in Europe Since the End of the Cold War PDF Author: Steven Van Hecke
Publisher: Leuven University Press
ISBN: 9789058673770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book Here

Book Description
The period since the end of the Cold War has been characterised by an acceleration in the European integration process, a changing pattern of political ideologies and the emergence of new political parties and issues. This book assesses the impact of these phenomena on Christian Democratic parties in the current and future member states of the European Union and highlights some of the particularities and universalities of European Christian Democracy from a comparative and transnational perspective. Political scientists and historians from various universities examine the way in which Christian Democratic parties have responded to these challenges (for instance by a rapprochement with non-Christian Democrats) and explain how those responses have resulted in failure in some cases and success in others.

Christian democracy in Italy and France

Christian democracy in Italy and France PDF Author: Mario Einaudi
Publisher: Archon
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description