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The rise of totalitarian regimes in Russia, Germany, and Italy between the two world wars preceded the professionalization of the study of politics. The political experience of recent decades suggests that where authoritarian regimes have given way to democratic systems in which politicians can be held accountable and where a rule of law prevails, there is little likelihood of a return to authoritarianism, least of all in the form of Communism or fascism. It is easier to continue to deny political liberties to people who have never experienced them than to remove freedoms to which citizens have quickly become accustomed. Whether the world’s first Communist state, Russia, will succeed in breaking decisively with its authoritarian past remains one of the most momentous of all the unresolved puzzles. It is one question among many likely to keep British students of politics busy into the twenty-first century.

The main focus of the chapter is on the first half of the short twentieth century as a background to European integration, but it contains some reflections on subsequent developments. Against the widely current description of the period from 1914 to 1945 as a time of European civil war, it is argued that the notion of a civilisational crisis is more adequate, and this crisis is best understood in terms of modernity as a distinctive civilisation with specific European variations. Global wars and totalitarian regimes, based on ideological absolutizations of class and nation as historical actors, are the defining features of the crisis period. The following phase, characterised by the Cold War, was partly a step beyond the crisis, partly a perpetuation of its dynamics. The process of European integration, unfolding in this context, was a response to the most traumatic experiences of the crisis, but also an attempt to move beyond the constellation that had proved conducive to disasters. This latter aspect may be described as the civilisational dimension of the European project. The concatenation of circumstances and intentions is a matter for historical interpretation, rather than strong theories; in this regard, the work of Alan Milward is exemplary.

Through an examination of the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, major issues in the policy of expatriation in the United States are introduced. The practice of stripping away citizenship and all the rights that come with it is usually associated with despotic and totalitarian regimes, but such practices are supported within the legal systems of most democratic countries, including the United States, where they have been undertaken not only in extreme situations. The common thread in most of the recent studies on citizenship is that immigration and naturalization processes are articulated in relation to the conception of citizenship and nationhood in a given country. That is, the regulations responsible for the entrance and inclusion of new members into the national community are dependent on the understanding of who should belong to the national “we” and who should not. This study examines the converse of those laws—the measures that deal with legally excluding people from membership in the political community (expatriation) or loss of citizenship. From early in its existence, the United States was suspicious of divided national loyalty and eventually established grounds for expatriation in order to regulate the singularity of nationality—one of the main principles of the national world order.

The study of modern despotisms has usually focused on Stalinism and National Socialism. This chapter commences with the prototype of terror during the French Revolution and then examines the origins and development of Stalinism, the subject of much twentieth-century literary dystopianism. The focus is on how the regimes usually termed ?totalitarian? used fear to create and maintain their power, and how this fear became so extreme and so destructive. The aim is to establish how the paranoid, persecutory psychology of dystopian groups outlined in earlier chapters, and in particular expressions of secular religiosity, provide key insights into the mentality of this regime.

This chapter examines the aims of achieving justice, truth, and peace in transitions from one political state to another. Although the bulk of the literature on transitions concerns transitions to democracy after an authoritarian or totalitarian regime, there is an emergent understanding that questions of justice also arise in the transition to peace. This transition to peace involves stabilizing measures of various kinds to prevent the reemergence of conflict. The chapter also addresses relations between different forms of justice, specifically between distributive and transitional justice. Given the need for both transitional and distributive justice (such as the equal distribution of land) governments face the problem of allocating scarce resources. Thus, they must decide whether to give priority to compensating victims of the conflict itself or to improving the situation of the landless poor in general.

This chapter details the expanding globalization and commercialization of the Olympics in the 1930s. Emerging from the economic ruins of the Great Depression, authoritarian and totalitarian regimes in Europe, Asia, and Latin America spurred a substantial rise in governmental involvement in international sport. Though the British were among the first to forge the linkage between competitive sport and national interests, their Fascist and militaristic rivals fully exploited the value of physical culture by positioning sport as the centerpiece of their foreign policy. The appropriation of elite, international sport by authoritarian regimes heightened the popularity and legitimacy of the Olympic Games. After successfully defending amateurism against the threat posed by broken-time payments, International Olympic Committee chiefs embraced the support of powerful right-wing governments. However, their initial hope soon turned to despair as it grew apparent that their authoritarian “allies” had transformed the Olympics into a ruthless game of realpolitik.

Through an examination of the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, major issues in the policy of expatriation in the United States are introduced. The practice of stripping away citizenship and all the rights that come with it is usually associated with despotic and totalitarian regimes, but such practices are supported within the legal systems of most democratic countries, including the United States, where they have been undertaken not only in extreme situations. The common thread in most of the recent studies on citizenship is that immigration and naturalization processes are articulated in relation to the conception of citizenship and nationhood in a given country. That is, the regulations responsible for the entrance and inclusion of new members into the national community are dependent on the understanding of who should belong to the national “we” and who should not. This study examines the converse of those laws—the measures that deal with legally excluding people from membership in the political community (expatriation) or loss of citizenship. From early in its existence, the United States was suspicious of divided national loyalty and eventually established grounds for expatriation in order to regulate the singularity of nationality—one of the main principles of the national world order.

This chapter examines the convergence of religious, political, and economic responses to pre-1945 totalitarianism that came to constitute a distinct world of welfare capitalism. The influence of religious ideas is examined through a focus on the intellectual journey of Jacques Maritain, the most prominent Catholic theologian, and political philosopher prior to the Second World War and during its aftermath. The chapter also explores how political champions of Christian democracy and of what would become the European Union, like Konrad Adenauer, combined Catholic ideas with liberal economics to create a distinct Christian democratic antidote to what were perceived as the causes of totalitarianism. Christian democracy very quickly became a prominent political force in several European countries with large Catholic populations, other than Spain and Portugal where totalitarian regimes remained in control. By 1948, Christian democrat political parties had become dominant or politically prominent in Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and in the Federal Republic of Germany following its establishment in 1949.