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Religion and Politics: The Identity of the Christian Democrat Movement and Theory of Democracy

Roberto Papini

in Religion, the Enlightenment, and the New Global Order

This chapter looks into the pluralist-democratic tradition of monism that has emerged in Catholicism. It traces the development of this Christian Democracy by briefly exploring the thought of three ... More

This chapter looks into the pluralist-democratic tradition of monism that has emerged in Catholicism. It traces the development of this Christian Democracy by briefly exploring the thought of three twentieth-century Catholic thinkers: Luigi Sturzo, Jacques Maritain, and Pope Pius XII. These thinkers rejected the aggrandizement of power by the state, seen especially in fascism that took hold after the First World War. Accepting the legitimacy of a secular politics, yet refusing to see purely procedural democracy as the only alternative to statism, Christian Democracy rejects individualism and social contractarianism. The tradition instead proposes democracy that upholds personalism, social solidarity, and subsidiarity or a strong role for mediating institutions between state and citizen. As such, it may point to a direction for other traditional religions, similarly concerned to reject purely procedural democracy and a public order free of religious values, to accept modern pluralism.Less

Cold War and the Fear of Subversion

Marc Mulholland

in Bourgeois Liberty and the Politics of Fear: From Absolutism to Neo-Conservatism

Post-war Western Europe converged towards an American model of high-wage consumerist capitalism, considerably attenuating class conflict. In Western Europe, Christian democracy and Social Democracy ... More

Post-war Western Europe converged towards an American model of high-wage consumerist capitalism, considerably attenuating class conflict. In Western Europe, Christian democracy and Social Democracy cooperated in constructing a democratic constitutional order. In the Soviet buffer-zone states of eastern Europe, bourgeois civil society was eliminated slice by slice: by a sequence known as ‘salami tactics’. This was partly in reaction to the perceived Western aggression of the ‘Marshall Plan’. Western Cold Warriors – drawing the lesson that Popular Frontism was only a means to the end of totalitarian communisiation – characterised Communist ‘subversion’ as an endemic corruption of leftist movements. This was considered to be a particular problem in the under-developed ‘Third World’. Fearing both subversion and outright war, a gigantic ‘Military-Industrial Complex’ grew up in the United States, placing pressure upon that country's traditions of democratic and free-market civil society.Less

Religious Autonomy and the Limited State

in God's Economy: Faith-Based Initiatives and the Caring State

In a public debate dominated by ideological interest groups that thrive on creating fear about religion, the intellectual genealogy of the faith-based initiative was not well understood. Yet because ... More

In a public debate dominated by ideological interest groups that thrive on creating fear about religion, the intellectual genealogy of the faith-based initiative was not well understood. Yet because of its religious ideas, the faith-based initiative holds the key to a new debate on poverty, one that neither side of the culture war is prepared to have. This chapter examines the Catholic and Dutch Calvinist theories of the limited state that shaped the design and implementation of the faith-based initiative in America. It first looks at the Catholic concept of subsidiarity before turning to the concept of sphere sovereignty developed by the Dutch Calvinist statesman and theologian Abraham Kuyper. The chapter also discusses Christian Democracy as opposed to Christian America, as well as social pluralism whose leading English theorists were John Neville Figgis and Harold Laski. Finally, it looks at Germany, in which confessional critics of the Weimar Republic's social-democratic welfare system helped pave the way for the Nazi seizure of power.Less

Debating Democracy: The Dialectic of Christian Democrat and Socialist Variants of Democracy

Martin Conway

in Western Europe's Democratic Age: 1945-1968

This chapter details how the Socialist and Christian Democratic movements competed and collaborated in the process of democracy-building. Much of the historical writing about both Christian Democracy ... More

This chapter details how the Socialist and Christian Democratic movements competed and collaborated in the process of democracy-building. Much of the historical writing about both Christian Democracy and Socialism in the post-1945 era has had a somewhat teleological (and occasionally self-congratulatory) character, dominated by self-contained narratives of the path that each political movement followed into democracy, and the ways that these movements in turn enriched the content of that democracy. This approach reflects the way in which these accounts have often been written from within their respective political traditions, with the consequence that they have been primarily concerned with reconstructing the trajectories of their political traditions, rather than the democracy that they made together. In contrast, the chapter explores the understandings of democracy advanced by Socialists and Christian Democrats through the prisms of their past history, their ideological declarations, and—perhaps most importantly—their programmes for the future construction of democracy. These threefold claims regarding past, present, and future could at times be convergent and complementary, especially when directed against Communism, but they were more frequently dialectical as Socialists and Christian Democrats defined their positions against each other, and thereby advanced their claims to ownership of democracy.Less

Catholicism in a Newly Communist World: Between Christian Democracy and Catholic Socialism

Piotr H. Kosicki

in Catholics on the Barricades: Poland, France, and "Revolution," 1891-1956

This chapter tells the story of how the Red Army’s liberation of Poland from German occupation in 1944–1945 circumscribed the postwar choices of Catholic activists. In a nascent Communist Poland, ... More

This chapter tells the story of how the Red Army’s liberation of Poland from German occupation in 1944–1945 circumscribed the postwar choices of Catholic activists. In a nascent Communist Poland, social Catholicism emerged as a hotly contested badge of honor—all while Catholic projects of “revolution” began to converge with their secular, Marxist counterpart. As a result, Thomism was driven to the margins of Communist Poland, and Christian Democracy eliminated outright. One strain of Catholic intellectuals proved both intellectually vibrant and, thanks to Communist support, politically viable. This was the ex-fascist Bolesław Piasecki’s Dziś i Jutro (Today and Tomorrow) movement, which wrapped itself in the banner of social Catholicism as it supplanted the Christian Democrats of Poland’s Christian Labor Party, led by Karol Popiel. All the while, Dziś i Jutro drew on both personalism and “revolution” to chart an alternative Catholic course in public life: Catholic socialism.Less

Personalism at War: Clandestine Intellectual Life and Anti-Nazi Resistance in World War II

Piotr H. Kosicki

in Catholics on the Barricades: Poland, France, and "Revolution," 1891-1956

This chapter tells the story of France and Poland’s wartime generation, born in the 1910s and 1920s, which drew inspiration during World War II from the young, upstart icon of Catholic “revolution”: ... More

This chapter tells the story of France and Poland’s wartime generation, born in the 1910s and 1920s, which drew inspiration during World War II from the young, upstart icon of Catholic “revolution”: Emmanuel Mounier. Jacques Maritain’s wartime exile to North America afforded him the freedom to produce copious writings that were then clandestinely dropped not only into France, but Poland as well. Yet his absence from the continent diminished Thomism’s relevance for the emerging anti-Nazi resistance. The resulting partnership between anti-fascism and Catholic “revolution” elevated Mounier in stature (despite his brief collaboration with Vichy France) and assured him canonical status for the generation of Catholic resisters who helped to achieve their respective homelands’ liberation from Nazism. At the same time, a strong alternative—also Catholic, also anti-fascist—emerged to Mounier: Christian Democracy.Less

A Convergence in Rome: The 1933 Iberoamerican Congress

Stephen J. C. Andes

in The Vatican and Catholic Activism in Mexico and Chile: The Politics of Transnational Catholicism, 1920-1940

The final chapter describes how Catholic Action’s non-partisan character influenced Catholic university students in Mexico, Chile, and throughout Latin America. It then suggests that young Catholic ... More

The final chapter describes how Catholic Action’s non-partisan character influenced Catholic university students in Mexico, Chile, and throughout Latin America. It then suggests that young Catholic university students used Vatican restrictions on electoral politics in the early stages of Christian Democratic party formation. In essence, both the Vatican and Christian Democrats desired to detach Church-sponsored organizations from partisan politics. The chapter details the experiences of these young university students in Rome at an international Catholic Action conference. It follows the travels of Eduardo Frei and Manuel Garretón who toured Europe and surveyed the political Catholic movements in Europe at the time.Less

The Social Law

in God's Economy: Faith-Based Initiatives and the Caring State

This chapter tries to “reframe” the debate on faith-based social policy in America, arguing that the confessional/philosophical genealogy of the faith-based initiative is becoming more relevant in ... More

This chapter tries to “reframe” the debate on faith-based social policy in America, arguing that the confessional/philosophical genealogy of the faith-based initiative is becoming more relevant in the emerging debate on economic insecurity. It considers these confessional welfare models as an expression of pluralist thought, or what it calls social pluralism. Pluralist political theory, associated in different ways with thinkers such as Felicité de Lamennais, Otto von Gierke, Harold Laski, and J. N. Figgis, roughly coincided with the emergence of confessional challenges to welfare and liberal education, as well as with the earliest stages of the politics of Christian Democracy. This “social pluralism” built in part on the older legal traditions of “church autonomy” and “freedom of the church,” but should not be confused with the rationalistic “interest-group” pluralism that characterizes American political theory. Rather, social pluralism is essentially an idea of political order that depends on older ideas of the intrinsic sovereignty of natural social structures and morally integrated groups.Less

Modell Deutschland as an Interdenominational Compromise

Philip Manow

in Social Protection, Capitalist Production: The Bismarckian Welfare State in the German Political Economy, 1880-2015

Chapter 3 argues that the cooperation in the interwar period between, economically, unions and employers and, politically, between Social and Christian Democracy, estranged the liberal Protestant ... More

Chapter 3 argues that the cooperation in the interwar period between, economically, unions and employers and, politically, between Social and Christian Democracy, estranged the liberal Protestant camp from its former pet project, social reform. An important consequence of this estrangement was the birth of ordoliberalism. Ordoliberalism, however, was much less influential in the postwar period than usually claimed. It legitimized a politics of non-intervention, which rather left a void for the corporate actors to fill, so it involuntarily furthered corporatism, not liberalism. Otherwise it provided the inability of the central state to actively manage the economy with a post hoc ideological justification. Thus, Germany’s postwar compromise was “bipolar,” combining corporatist cooperation between capital and labor, heavily reliant on the organizational and material resources of the welfare state, with a central government with limited capacity for macroeconomic steering and without the means of credibly issuing promises of full employment (as the main difference in comparison to the Scandinavian cases).Less

Conclusion

Stephen J. C. Andes

in The Vatican and Catholic Activism in Mexico and Chile: The Politics of Transnational Catholicism, 1920-1940

As the Vatican founded an official model of Catholic Action globally during the decade, papal officials seemed to understand that Catholic cultural norms would not change overnight. The inculcation ... More

As the Vatican founded an official model of Catholic Action globally during the decade, papal officials seemed to understand that Catholic cultural norms would not change overnight. The inculcation of Catholic Action’s normative practice on political participation appears similar to the process of ‘habitus’ described by Pierre Bourdieu, who argues that rules for behaviour are learned through a diverse network of social relations. Aspe Armella has applied this framework for understanding Catholic Action in Mexico, but the analysis is helpful for the Chilean case as well. Thus, Catholic Action’s discourse on politics was an important, and unstudied, influence on the development of both Chilean Christian Democracy and Mexico’s Partido Acción Nacional. However, the Mexican post-revolutionary state’s restrictions on Catholic party politics was also a crucial factor in the trajectory of the PAN.Less

Liberal Catholicism Reexamined

Peter Steinfels

in Believing Scholars: Ten Catholic Intellectuals

This chapter examines liberal Catholicism and its role on the life of Peter Steinfels. It argues that liberal Catholicism is, in fact, a controverted and approximate label. Its history overlaps with ... More

This chapter examines liberal Catholicism and its role on the life of Peter Steinfels. It argues that liberal Catholicism is, in fact, a controverted and approximate label. Its history overlaps with that of Christian Democracy, social Catholicism, and modernism. The chapter notes that liberal Catholicism was rooted in Romanticism more than in the Enlightenment. Its rebellion against the old alliance of throne and altar, and its eventual embrace of freedom of religion for all, was restorationist, not revolutionary. The chapter points out five observations of liberal Catholicism. The chapter concludes by discussing the themes of heroism, joy, and obedience.Less

Between East and West: Communism, Anti-Communism, and the Cold War

Rosario Forlenza

in On the Edge of Democracy: Italy, 1943-1948

This chapter deals with the growing influence of both Soviet and domestic Communism on the evolution of democracy and the political transformation of Italy. It inserts the political and existential ... More

This chapter deals with the growing influence of both Soviet and domestic Communism on the evolution of democracy and the political transformation of Italy. It inserts the political and existential choices of the fledgling democratic society into the overarching context of the time, which was the incipient Cold War. Italy was a microcosm of this global context, because the most important political forces, the Catholics and the Communists, operated with the myth of freedom/America and the myth of the Soviet Union respectively. Yet the struggle was not exclusively pervaded and marked by contrast, fear, and opposition. Party political opponents had fought together in the anti-fascist Resistance and had collaborated in the organization of the democratic institutional arrangement and in the writing of the republican Constitution. The apparently ideological struggle between Catholics and communists was in reality a search for order and meaning between two contested sovereignties.Less

The Vatican, Chilean Conservatives, and Social Catholics in the 1930s

Stephen J. C. Andes

in The Vatican and Catholic Activism in Mexico and Chile: The Politics of Transnational Catholicism, 1920-1940

In Chile, a younger generation of Catholic activists readily accepted papal policy as justification for their own desire to disconnect Catholic political action from clerical control. The reason was ... More

In Chile, a younger generation of Catholic activists readily accepted papal policy as justification for their own desire to disconnect Catholic political action from clerical control. The reason was practical in nature: these ‘Christian Democrats’, as they referred to themselves, could draw from a larger political base and would no longer be directed by the Church hierarchy, who were often more socially conservative. The most salient example of this occurred in Chile, where Catholic Action groups who were fed-up with the episcopate’s attempts to bind them to the Partido Conservador eventually formed the Falange Nacional (1938) outside the Church. The Falange Nacional was the first incarnation of the Partido Demócrata Cristiano de Chile (1957). In essence, the Vatican and Christian Democrats both desired to detach Church-controlled organizations from party politics.Less

America is Coming, America is Coming!

Rosario Forlenza

in On the Edge of Democracy: Italy, 1943-1948

This chapter analyzes the importance of “America” (effectively synonymous with “the West”) as an idealized goal of the political, social, and individual imagination, and examines how the American ... More

This chapter analyzes the importance of “America” (effectively synonymous with “the West”) as an idealized goal of the political, social, and individual imagination, and examines how the American model of democracy shaped the democratic aspirations of millions of Italians. The arrival of the American armies exerted a great fascination on Italians. However, the myth of America as land of freedom and plenty had been already introduced within the fabric of the Italian society by the power of cinema and literature, and, most importantly, by the culture of letters produced by millions of Italian emigrants. The attraction of America was not only an existential alternative to the backward and poor Italy, further demoralized by the failure of Fascism, but also an effective carrier of the decisive electoral triumph of Christian Democracy over the leftist Popular Front in the parliamentary elections of 1948.Less

Italy’s Forgotten Partition

Nadav G. Shelef

in Homelands: Shifting Borders and Territorial Disputes

This chapter analyzes the division of Venezia Giulia, a paradigmatic case in which the partition of homeland territory in the aftermath of war came to be accepted as appropriate by those on both ... More

This chapter analyzes the division of Venezia Giulia, a paradigmatic case in which the partition of homeland territory in the aftermath of war came to be accepted as appropriate by those on both sides of the border. At the end of World War II, American intelligence services identified the border between Italy and Yugoslavia as particularly problematic and as a likely location for violent confrontations between East and West. Alongside the raging international conflict of the Second World War, this border zone was the site of an ethnic civil war between Slavs and Italians that was as bloody and bitter as any other. Yet, by the 1970s, this region became a model for regional cooperation. While individual claims for compensation for lost property remain, mainstream Italian nationalists no longer claim the areas they once fought for so passionately as appropriately part of their homeland. The chapter argues that this acceptance was not automatic or inevitable. Rather, the efforts of the governing Christian Democracy Party (DC) to stem additional territorial losses after the war and to overcome the short-term political challenges it faced in the new republic shaped the timing and process of the withdrawal of homeland territoriality from once-sacred land.Less

Structural Vulnerabilities of the Transnational Sphere

Jonathan White

in Politics of Last Resort: Governing by Emergency in the European Union

Since its origins in the 1950s, European integration has entailed the creation of institutions whose rationale is to advance and maintain certain policy ends, notably the ‘four freedoms’ of the ... More

Since its origins in the 1950s, European integration has entailed the creation of institutions whose rationale is to advance and maintain certain policy ends, notably the ‘four freedoms’ of the common market. As this chapter argues, the effect is that policy commitments have tended to be privileged over procedural arrangements. Rather than self-standing entities that can be put to different ends, broadly on the model of the modern state, one sees institutions evolving with the policies, and liable to be side-stepped should they fail to serve those ends. A non-hierarchical constitutional structure does little to inhibit these restructurings, indeed arguably gives further encouragement. The ideas and practices of emergency become ways to galvanize action, coordination, and innovation across a diverse and potentially recalcitrant institutional field.Less

Toward a General Theory of Religiously Friendly Democratization

Michael D. Driessen

in Religion and Democratization: Framing Religious and Political Identities in Muslim and Catholic Societies

This chapter presents the book’s theoretical model for describing the dialectic dynamics created by a religiously friendly democratization process in a country whose religious market is dominated by ... More

This chapter presents the book’s theoretical model for describing the dialectic dynamics created by a religiously friendly democratization process in a country whose religious market is dominated by ambivalently democratic religious actors. It first considers how religiously friendly democratization affects the political goals and discourse of religious political movements, drawing on and advancing scholarship on the inclusion-moderation hypothesis, post-Islamism, Christian Democracy and party politics. It then considers how religiously friendly democratization affects the religious life of the nation, drawing on and advancing recent scholarship on secularization, public religion and comparative religious economies.Less