Half a century ago, at the height of the Cold War and amidst a world economic crisis, the Western democracies were forced to undergo a profound transformation. Against what some saw as a full-scale 'crisis of democracy' - with race riots, anti-Vietnam marches and a wave of worker discontent - a new political-economic order was devised and the post-war social contract written anew. In this epic narrative of the events that have shaped our own times, Simon Reid-Henry shows how liberal democracy, and Western history with it, ...
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Half a century ago, at the height of the Cold War and amidst a world economic crisis, the Western democracies were forced to undergo a profound transformation. Against what some saw as a full-scale 'crisis of democracy' - with race riots, anti-Vietnam marches and a wave of worker discontent - a new political-economic order was devised and the post-war social contract written anew. In this epic narrative of the events that have shaped our own times, Simon Reid-Henry shows how liberal democracy, and Western history with it, was profoundly re-imagined when the post-war Golden Age ended. As the institutions of liberal rule were reinvented, a new generation of politicians emerged: Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, Kohl. The late twentieth-century heyday they oversaw carried the Western democracies triumphantly to victory in the Cold War, ushering in an economic boom and a new spirit of optimism by the millennium. But the war on terror and the high drama of the financial crisis in 2007/8 shone a different light upon the decisions taken to secure capitalist democracy in the 1970s, laying the basis for the anti-liberal surge of recent times: from Viktor Orb�n and Marine le Pen, to Brexit and Donald Trump. The present crisis of liberalism demands us to revisit these unscripted decades. The era we have lived through is closing out; democracy is turning on its axis once again. As this gripping history reminds us, the choices we make going forward require us first to understand where we have been.
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Add this copy of Empire of Democracy: the Remaking of the West Since the to cart. $30.50, like new condition, Sold by Marlowes Books rated 2.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Ferny Hills, Brisbane, QLD, AUSTRALIA, published 2019 by John Murray Publishers Ltd.