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The crisis of democracy in inter-war Britain
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Middleton, Stuart (2023) The crisis of democracy in inter-war Britain. Historical Journal , 66 (1). pp. 186-209. doi:10.1017/S0018246X22000231 ISSN 0018-246X.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X22000231
Abstract
This article reconstructs and examines the idea that democracy (in various senses) was fragile or, as some had it, in ‘crisis’ in interwar Britain. Recent scholarship on interwar political culture has generally emphasized its democratic or ‘democratizing’ character, in line with a conventional historical view of Britain as an exception to the instability and contestation of democracy in Europe. It is argued here that Britain's embroilment in a European ‘crisis’ of democracy was a commonplace of contemporary political thought, commentary, and argument; and that anxieties surrounding this prompted some of the initiatives that are conventionally seen as evidence of ‘democratization’. A properly historical understanding of those initiatives, and of interwar political culture in general, therefore appears to require that contemporary ideas of the weakness or ‘crisis’ of democracy in Britain are taken seriously (but not necessarily endorsed). In conclusion, the article suggests that interwar discussions of democracy gave rise to a tendency to equate democracy with a form of negative liberty, which registered and facilitated influential developments in politics and political thought beyond the interwar period; and that historical understanding of democracy in modern Britain might be enriched through an engagement with the political theorist Sheldon Wolin's concept of ‘fugitive democracy’.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe) > JN101 Great Britain | ||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Democracy -- Great Britain, Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1918 -- 1945, Democracy -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century, Radicalism -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century, Democracy -- Great Britain -- History | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Historical Journal | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0018-246X | ||||||||
| Official Date: | February 2023 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 66 | ||||||||
| Number: | 1 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 186-209 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1017/S0018246X22000231 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | This article has been accepted for publication in a revised form for publication in https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal. | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 8 August 2022 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 15 August 2022 | ||||||||
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