1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910779167003321

Autore

Müller Jan-Werner <1970->

Titolo

Contesting democracy [[electronic resource] ] : political ideas in twentieth-century Europe / / Jan-Werner Müller

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New Haven, CT, : Yale University Press, c2011

ISBN

1-280-59609-0

9786613625922

0-300-18090-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (304 p.)

Disciplina

321.8

Soggetti

Democracy - Philosophy - History - 20th century

Democracy - Europe - History - 20th century

Ideology - Europe - History - 20th century

Political science - Europe - History - 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Introduction -- 1. The Molten Mass -- 2. Interwar Experiments: Making Peoples, Remaking Souls -- 3. Fascist Subjects: The Total State and Volksgemeinschaft -- 4. Reconstruction Thought: Self-Disciplined Democracies, 'People's Democracies' -- 5. The New Time of Contestation: Towards a Fatherless Society -- 6. Antipolitics, and the Sense of an Ending -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgements

Sommario/riassunto

This book is the first major account of political thought in twentieth-century Europe, both West and East, to appear since the end of the Cold War. Skillfully blending intellectual, political, and cultural history, Jan-Werner Müller elucidates the ideas that shaped the period of ideological extremes before 1945 and the liberalization of West European politics after the Second World War. He also offers vivid portraits of famous as well as unjustly forgotten political thinkers and the movements and institutions they inspired. Müller pays particular attention to ideas advanced to justify fascism and how they relate to the special kind of liberal democracy that was created in postwar Western Europe. He also explains the impact of the 1960's and neoliberalism, ending with a



critical assessment of today's self-consciously post-ideological age.