SOCIAL POLITICS IN A TRANSOCEANIC WORLD IN THE EARLY COLD WAR YEARS

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 401-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN BELL
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
New Deal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The New Deal

ABSTRACTThis article argues that those termed ‘liberals’ in the United States had the opportunity in the late 1940s to use overseas case studies to reshape the ramshackle political agenda of the New Deal along more specifically social democratic lines, but that they found it impossible to match interest in the wider world with a concrete programme to overcome tension between left-wing politics and the emerging anti-totalitarianism of the Cold War. The American right, by contrast, conducted a highly organized publicity drive to provide new meaning for their anti-statist ideology in a post-New Deal, post-isolationist United States by using perceived failures of welfare states overseas as domestic propaganda. The examples of Labour Britain after 1945 and Labour New Zealand both provided important case studies for American liberals and conservatives, but in the Cold War it was the American right who would benefit most from an ideologically driven repackaging of overseas social policy for an American audience.

Liberalism from the Fair Deal to the Great Society

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Labor Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Great Society ◽  
The New Deal

In 1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s State of the Union address set out what he termed an “economic Bill of Rights” that would act as a manifesto of liberal policies after World War Two. Politically, however, the United States was a different place than the country that had faced the ravages of the Great Depression of the 1930s and ushered in Roosevelt’s New Deal to transform the relationship between government and the people. Key legacies of the New Deal, such as Social Security, remained and were gradually expanded, but opponents of governmental regulation of the economy launched a bitter campaign after the war to roll back labor union rights and dismantle the New Deal state. Liberal heirs to FDR in the 1950s, represented by figures like two-time presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, struggled to rework liberalism to tackle the realities of a more prosperous age. The long shadow of the U.S. Cold War with the Soviet Union also set up new challenges for liberal politicians trying to juggle domestic and international priorities in an era of superpower rivalry and American global dominance. The election of John F. Kennedy as president in November 1960 seemed to represent a narrow victory for Cold War liberalism, and his election coincided with the intensification of the struggle for racial equality in the United States that would do much to shape liberal politics in the 1960s. After his assassination in 1963, President Lyndon Johnson launched his “Great Society,” a commitment to eradicate poverty and to provide greater economic security for Americans through policies such as Medicare. But his administration’s deepening involvement in the Vietnam War and its mixed record on alleviating poverty did much to taint the positive connotations of “liberalism” that had dominated politics during the New Deal era.

Corporate Influence and World War II: Resolving the New Deal Political Stalemate

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Waddell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
State Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
The New Deal

Since many scholars focus on the New Deal as the foundation for modern U.S. governance, it is widely assumed that the United States is characterized by a weak state as compared to the welfare states of Western Europe. Yet, in the wake of World War II, the United States established a national security “warfare state” that rivaled the welfare states of Western Europe in scope of authority and operations and in its isolation from popular forces. The wartime redirection of U.S. state power also resolved the political stalemate stemming from the executive-congressional and business-government tensions roused during the New Deal. In fact, the course of wartime statebuilding was in many ways a response to the political tensions of the New Deal and to the expectation that the organization of wartime mobilization would indelibly define the postwar organization of U.S. state power. As this article argues, wartime mobilization resolved the New Deal political stalemate in large part by granting various segments of the corporate community the opportunity to influence the shape of U.S. national state power.

Opening the Window for Reform

1993 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 433-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN T. S. KEELER
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Socioeconomic Crisis ◽  
The New Deal

Under what conditions are governments within established democratic political systems willing and able to launch ambitious reform programs? In other words, what conjunctural factors generally serve to open the “window” for reform? The central argument of this article is that extraordinary policy-making generally becomes possible only when a macro-window is opened by a government's achievement of an impressive mandate and/or by the onset of a severe socioeconomic crisis. The mandate-reform hypothesis is tested with data from Britain, France, and the United States, then the significance of both mandates and crises is demonstrated through an analysis of eight “reform government” case studies ranging from the New Deal to Thatcher's Britain.

Containment Reappraised

2020 ◽  
pp. 174-194
Author(s):  
Wallace J. Thies
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Regional Power ◽  
World War ◽  
Bush Doctrine ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
First World

This chapter reviews the relative merits of the two theories of victory — containment and the Bush Doctrine — based on evidence drawn from the five case studies and the Cold War too. The case studies covered in the earlier chapters suggest that deterrence has become very much a one-way street. When a superpower like the United States confronts a regional power like Libya, Iraq, or Iran, the superpower can make very credible threats to take military action against the regional power, but not vice versa. Containment, as practiced by the United States during the Cold War, often tried to slow the pace of events in order to reduce the risk of being swept up into an unwanted conflict spiral referred to as the Sarajevo Syndrome. The goal of the policy was to lessen the risk of repeating the errors that preceded the outbreak of the First World War.

The Endurance of New Deal Liberalism

1996 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 415-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Plotke
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Cold War

The increase in writing by political historians and political scientists about the United States in the 1940s registers concerns aboutorigins– after some major endings, notably of Democratic political predominance and the Cold War. That decade also saw the beginning of serious national efforts at reform in racial politics.

Verán ustedes las chozas más humildes. El discurso de pobreza en la diplomacia pública cardenista dirigida a Estados Unidos

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281
Author(s):  
Sylvia Dümmer Scheel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Government ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
The New Deal

El artículo analiza la diplomacia pública del gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas centrándose en su opción por publicitar la pobreza nacional en el extranjero, especialmente en Estados Unidos. Se plantea que se trató de una estrategia inédita, que accedió a poner en riesgo el “prestigio nacional” con el fin de justificar ante la opinión pública estadounidense la necesidad de implementar las reformas contenidas en el Plan Sexenal. Aprovechando la inusual empatía hacia los pobres en tiempos del New Deal, se construyó una imagen específica de pobreza que fuera higiénica y redimible. Ésta, sin embargo, no generó consenso entre los mexicanos. This article analyzes the public diplomacy of the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, focusing on the administration’s decision to publicize the nation’s poverty internationally, especially in the United States. This study suggests that this was an unprecedented strategy, putting “national prestige” at risk in order to explain the importance of implementing the reforms contained in the Six Year Plan, in the face of public opinion in the United States. Taking advantage of the increased empathy felt towards the poor during the New Deal, a specific image of hygienic and redeemable poverty was constructed. However, this strategy did not generate agreement among Mexicans.

Trust, but Verify

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
East West

This book uses trust—with its emotional and predictive aspects—to explore international relations in the second half of the Cold War, beginning with the late 1960s. The détente of the 1970s led to the development of some limited trust between the United States and the Soviet Union, which lessened international tensions and enabled advances in areas such as arms control. However, it also created uncertainty in other areas, especially on the part of smaller states that depended on their alliance leaders for protection. The chapters in this volume look at how the “emotional” side of the conflict affected the dynamics of various Cold War relations: between the superpowers, within the two ideological blocs, and inside individual countries on the margins of the East–West confrontation.

Ballet in the Cold War

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Searcy
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
The United States ◽  
Performing Artists ◽  
Exchange Programs ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

During the Cold War, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union developed cultural exchange programs, in which they sent performing artists abroad in order to generate goodwill for their countries. Ballet companies were frequently called on to serve in these programs, particularly in the direct Soviet-American exchange. This book analyzes four of the early ballet exchange tours, demonstrating how this series of encounters changed both geopolitical relations and the history of dance. The ballet tours were enormously popular. Performances functioned as an important symbolic meeting point for Soviet and American officials, creating goodwill and normalizing relations between the two countries in an era when nuclear conflict was a real threat. At the same time, Soviet and American audiences did not understand ballet in the same way. As American companies toured in the Soviet Union and vice versa, audiences saw the performances through the lens of their own local aesthetics. Ballet in the Cold War introduces the concept of transliteration to understand this process, showing how much power viewers wielded in the exchange and explaining how the dynamics of the Cold War continue to shape ballet today.

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