The Politics of Moderation in Modern European History
Description
This book charts the varieties of political moderation in modern European history from the French Revolution to the present day. It explores the attempts to find a middle way between ideological extremes, from the nineteenth-century Juste Milieu and balance of power, via the Third Ways between capitalism and socialism, to the current calls for moderation beyond populism and religious radicalism. The essays in this volume are inspired by the widely-recognized need for a more nuanced political discourse. The contributors demonstrate how the history of modern politics offers a range of experiences and examples of the search for a middle way that can help us to navigate the tensions of the current political climate. At the same time, the volume offers a diagnosis of the problems and pitfalls of Third Ways, of finding the middle between extremes, and of the weaknesses of the moderate point of view.
Reviews / Votes
"This wide-ranging, intellectually-bracing volume reconstructs a neglected site of thought and action, which it identifies as a tradition of political moderation ever since the start of the age of democratic revolutions. In so doing, it offers a bounty of sustained historical and analytical imagination, reshaping inquiry and understanding." (Ira Katznelson, Columbia University, USA)"This highly innovative volume provides the first comparative historical explanation of moderation in Europe from the era of the French revolution of 1789 to the present day. It brings together an excellent team of scholars who explore how moderation has been understood and practised, as an ideology, as a form of politics, and as a personal way ofbeing. It is a volume which should be read by anybody who wants to understand European history from the centre rather than the extremes." (Martin Conway, University of Oxford, UK ) "This collection of interesting and illuminating essays appears at a propitious moment. At no time in the last decades has the concept of political moderation been in greater need of study. The Politics of Moderation in Modern European History offers a timely and welcome reflection on this important topic. The volume brings together a rich collection of essays that go some way to deepening our understanding of moderation as a political concept and experience of political and social life." (Michael Drolet, University of Oxford, UK)More details
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Persons
Ido de Haan is Professor of Political History at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He has published on nineteenth-century European political history, on the history and memory of the Holocaust, on Jewish history, and on the history of citizenship, democracy, and the welfare state. He currently studies the history of neoliberalism in the Netherlands.
Matthijs Lok is Assistant Professor of Modern European History at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His publications focus on the politics of memory and forgetting in the Restoration era, on the Counter-Enlightenment, European conservatism and nationalism, on the history of state formation and civil administration, and on the historiography of Europe.