My book project is tentatively titled The Liberal Origins of Fascism: The Politics of Access in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It examines the failed democratic consolidation of the constituent states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire—the negative cases of Europe’s first wave of democratization.
Brief Description:
This book argues that the fate of democracy or autocracy hinges less on dramatic revolutions than on everyday decisions about who gets a seat at the table and how the game of politics is played. Parties, through reforms to access, shaped the future of states by deciding which individuals and groups were included—and which were excluded. The book examines imperial party politics and the social origins of nationalist and fascist governance in the successor states of continental empires. It traces how liberal strategies of parliamentary elites, together with the responses of externally mobilized parties and civil organizations, managed threats from above and below during liberalization. Across Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East, elites selectively expanded voting and civil rights to diffuse opposition, while entrenching group-based exclusions into law. This asymmetry of imperial liberalism—individual inclusion alongside collective exclusion—created durable inequalities that persisted after empire.
Focusing on Austria and Hungary, the rump states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the book develops a theory of middle-down politicization and mobilization through associational endowments, showing how extra-parliamentary parties organized and mobilized the excluded in civil society through need-based non-state social welfare "policy" and provision. As imperial orders collapsed by the first half of the twentieth century, these previously excluded actors abandonded by the liberal parties of the Imperial period, constructed exclusionary group boundaries, organized against top-down liberalism (secularism, democracy, and capitalism), and embraced protective militancy. The result was divergent authoritarian trajectories: Hungary toward Settled Fascism, Austria toward Pluralist Autocracy. Based on extensive archival research and historiography, the book counters nationalist narratives of “imported” fascism by uncovering its domestic—if unintended—origins in the liberalizing reforms of Europe’s first wave of democratization.
DOWNLOAD A WORKING DRAFT OF THE FIRST CHAPTER
Please reach out for chapter summaries or the prospectus at lotem[dot]halevy[at]uni[dash]konstanz[dot]de
Brief Description:
This book argues that the fate of democracy or autocracy hinges less on dramatic revolutions than on everyday decisions about who gets a seat at the table and how the game of politics is played. Parties, through reforms to access, shaped the future of states by deciding which individuals and groups were included—and which were excluded. The book examines imperial party politics and the social origins of nationalist and fascist governance in the successor states of continental empires. It traces how liberal strategies of parliamentary elites, together with the responses of externally mobilized parties and civil organizations, managed threats from above and below during liberalization. Across Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East, elites selectively expanded voting and civil rights to diffuse opposition, while entrenching group-based exclusions into law. This asymmetry of imperial liberalism—individual inclusion alongside collective exclusion—created durable inequalities that persisted after empire.
Focusing on Austria and Hungary, the rump states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the book develops a theory of middle-down politicization and mobilization through associational endowments, showing how extra-parliamentary parties organized and mobilized the excluded in civil society through need-based non-state social welfare "policy" and provision. As imperial orders collapsed by the first half of the twentieth century, these previously excluded actors abandonded by the liberal parties of the Imperial period, constructed exclusionary group boundaries, organized against top-down liberalism (secularism, democracy, and capitalism), and embraced protective militancy. The result was divergent authoritarian trajectories: Hungary toward Settled Fascism, Austria toward Pluralist Autocracy. Based on extensive archival research and historiography, the book counters nationalist narratives of “imported” fascism by uncovering its domestic—if unintended—origins in the liberalizing reforms of Europe’s first wave of democratization.
DOWNLOAD A WORKING DRAFT OF THE FIRST CHAPTER
Please reach out for chapter summaries or the prospectus at lotem[dot]halevy[at]uni[dash]konstanz[dot]de