An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
War has diverse and seemingly contradictory effects on liberal democratic institutions and processes. It has led democracies to abandon their principles, expanding executive authority and restricting civil liberties, but it has also prompted the development of representative parliamentary institutions. It has undercut socioeconomic reform, but it has also laid the basis for the modern welfare state. This landmark volume brings together distinguished political scientists, historians, and sociologists to explore the impact of war on liberal democracy - a subject far less studied than the causes of war but hardly less important. Three questions drive the analysis: How does war shape the transition to and durability of democracy? How does war influence democratic contestation? How does war transform democratic participation? Employing a wide range of methods, this volume assesses what follows in the wake of war.
This text employs a cultural approach to take issue with the conventional wisdom that military organizations inherently prefer offensive doctrines. It argues instead that a military's culture affects its choices between offensive and defensive military doctrines. Drawing on organizational theory, it demonstrates that military organizations differ in their worldview and the proper conduct of their mission. It is this organizational culture that shapes how the military responds to such constraints as terms of conscription set by civilian policy-makers. In detailed case studies, the author examines doctrinal developments in France and Britain during the interwar period. She tests her argument against two of the most powerful alternative explanations and illustrates that neither the functional needs of military organizations nor the structural demands of the international system can explain doctrinal choice. She also reveals as a myth the argument that the lessons of World War One explain the defensive doctrines on World War Two.
How does the prosecution of war on the homefront affect postwar democratic politics and the likelihood for major reform? Wars cause death and destruction, but important political and social reforms often follow in their wake. At times it appears that the greater the destruction, the greater the growth of state power, and the greater the infringement on civil liberties, the more fundamental and far reaching the reforms. After World War I, Britain, Austria, and Belgium broadened the franchise and many countries granted political rights to women. World War II led to an even greater extension of political and social reforms. It is no accident that a historian would entitle her book War Is Good for Babies and Other Young Children.
In critiquing the mainstream view that total war advances democracy, War and Democracy reveals how politics during the war transforms societal actors who become crucial to postwar political settlements and the prospects for democratic reform.
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.