The Politics of Moderation in Modern European History

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.

Explores the range of attempts in modern European history to find a middle way between ideological extremes Argues that the history of modern politics can inform our understanding of the current political climate, drawing on past examples of the search for moderate perspectives Evaluates the problems and pitfalls of choosing 'third ways' between extreme points of view

Autorentext

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.

Inhalt
Introduction: The Politics of Moderation - Ido de Haan and Matthijs Lok.- Part I: Post-Revolutionary Moderation.- 1 Against Popular Societies and Faction. Transatlantic Discourses of Moderation in the American, French, and Dutch Republics of the 1790s - René Koekkoek.- 2 Moderation and Religion in Post-Revolutionary French Liberalism: Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant - Arthur Ghins.- 3 'The Extremes Set the Tone': Counter-Revolutionary Moderation in Continental Conservatism (ca. 1795-1840) - Matthijs Lok.- 4 Taming the Evil Passions. Moderation in the International Relations - Beatrice de Graaf.- 5 In Medio Stat Virtus? The Adaptability of the Moderate Project of Politics in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Europe (1830-1870) - Amerigo Caruso.- Part II: Third ways, moderation, and radicalism in the twentieth century.- 6 Third Ways Out of the Crisis of Liberalism. Moderation and Radicalism in Germany, 1880-1950 - Ido de Haan.- 7 French Fascism as a Revolution of the Centre. Intellectuals between Revolution and Conservation - Daniel Knegt.- 8 Moderation through Expertise: Functional Elites and the Politics of Moderation in Western Europe's Mid-Twentieth Century - Camilo Erlichman.- 9 'Disconnect Romanticism from Politics': Democracy's Moderate Face in Cold War Western Europe - Pepijn Corduwener.- 10 The Short History and Long Legacy of the Third Way. Social Democracy at the End of the Twentieth Century - Hanco Jürgens.- Part III: Moderation beyond the European Tradition.- 11 Moderation as Orthodoxy in Sunni Islam. Or, Why Nobody Wants to be the Kharijite - Robbert Woltering.- 12 Moderation: a Radical Virtue - Aurelian Craiutu Sheldon Gellar.-