Description
Book SynopsisThis is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.Across Europe, people are deeply concerned about the state of democracy. The Rise and Fall of the People''s Parties shifts the attention away from ever-changing populist politicians that capture newspaper headlines to the centre-left and centre-right people''s parties that used to buttress the democratic order over the past decades, but which are now in steep decline. Why does the crisis of these parties contribute so profoundly to today''s crisis of democracy? And why were these parties so important for the stabilization and legitimation of democracy in the past century in the first place?By providing a long-term and transnational account of the history of democracy in modern Europe, The Rise and Fall of the People''s Parties reveals the striking parallels between the hist
