Explaining the Absence of Christian Democracy in Contemporary Poland

Increasingly alone as a stable republican nation in Latin America, Chile has long been a favorite subject for North American scholars and journalists. Every six years, as it faces a presidential election, the world press breathlessly rediscovers that this long slim country confronts its public problems within the framework of a developed, democratic political system. When in 1964 Chile placed a young idealistic party in power behind Eduardo Frei, an unquestionably intelligent figure of austere but charismatic bearing, this country became a favorite model for the advocates of democratic reformism in Latin America and soon was receiving the highest United States foreign aid per capita in Latin America. Thus it came as a shock that the Chilean electorate could turn its back on Frei's administration in 1970 by favoring the rightist and Marxist candidates. For those who saw in the government of Frei a basic alternative to Marxist models for Latin America, the free election of an avowed Marxist as the President of Chile presents additional problems.

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Religion, Class, and the Postwar Development of the Dutch Welfare State

10.5117/9789462986411 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Dennie Oude Nijhuis

Keyword(s):

The Netherlands ◽

Welfare Reform ◽

Labor Union ◽

Welfare States ◽

Christian Democracy ◽

Union Movement ◽

Welfare Systems ◽

Welfare Generosity ◽

Post War ◽

Distribution Of Income

This book examines how the Netherlands managed to create and maintain one of the world’s most generous and inclusive welfare systems despite having been dominated by Christian-democratic or ŸconservativeŒ, rather than socialist dominated governments, for most of the post-war period. It emphasizes that such systems have strong consequences for the distribution of income and risk among different segments of society and argues that they could consequently only emerge in countries where middle class groups were unable to utilize their key electoral and strong labor market position to mobilize against the adverse consequences of redistribution for them. By illustrating their key role in the coming about of solidaristic welfare reform in the Netherlands, the book also offers a novel view of the roles of Christian-democracy and the labor union movement in the development of modern welfare states. By highlighting how welfare reform contributed to the employment miracle of the 1990s, the book sheds new light on how countries are able to combine high levels of welfare generosity and solidarity with successful macro-economic performance.

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Christian Democracy and the Fall of Communism. Ed Michael Gehler, Piotr H. Kosicki, and Helmut Wohnout. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2019. 357 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $79.50, hard bound.

Slavic Review ◽

10.1017/slr.2021.108 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 80 (2) ◽

pp. 404-405

Author(s):

Geoffrey Hosking

Keyword(s):

Christian Democracy

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Judeo-Christian democracy and the Transatlantic Right: Travels of a contested civilizational imaginary

New Perspectives ◽

10.1177/2336825x211052979 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 2336825X2110529

Author(s):

Vibeke Schou Tjalve

Keyword(s):

State Power ◽

Far Right ◽

Christian Democracy ◽

The Us

“Judeo-Christian civilization” and “Christian democracy” have emerged as darling far Right tropes, seemingly uniting radical conservatives in the US and Europe behind a single, geopolitical imaginary. This article presents a brief political-conceptual story of how “Judeo-Christianity” and “Christian democracy” became a rhetorical meeting ground for radical conservatives across the Atlantic. But it also sheds light on why deep, historical, intellectual, and ethnographic divides beneath, make those grounds highly unstable terrain. Divides not only between European and American traditions of liberalism and conservatism but also between the experiences and practices of state power that inform them. Beneath the slogans of Christian democracy espoused in such disparate contexts as Charlottesville and Budapest, move different legacies, memories, enemies.

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