Empire of Democracy: The Remaking of the West Since the Cold War

by Simon Reid-Henry

Overview

The first panoramic history of the Western world from the 1970s to the present day—from the Cold War to the 2008 financial crisis and wars in the Middle East—Empire of Democracy is “a superbly informed and riveting historical analysis of our contemporary era” (Charles S. Maier, Harvard University).

Half a century ago, at the height of the Cold War and amidst a world economic crisis, the Western democracies were forced to undergo a profound transformation. Against what some saw as a full-scale “crisis of democracy”—with race riots, anti-Vietnam marches and a wave of worker discontent sowing crisis from one nation to the next—a new political-economic order was devised and the postwar social contract was torn up and written anew.

In this epic narrative of the events that have shaped our own times, Simon Reid-Henry shows how liberal democracy, and western history with it, was profoundly reimagined when the postwar Golden Age ended. As the institutions of liberal rule were reinvented, a new generation of politicians emerged: Thatcher, Reagan, Mitterrand, Kohl. The late twentieth century heyday they oversaw carried the Western democracies triumphantly to victory in the Cold War and into the economic boom of the 1990s. But equally it led them into the fiasco of Iraq, to the high drama of the financial crisis in 2007/8, and ultimately to the anti-liberal surge of our own times.

The present crisis of liberalism is leading us toward as yet unscripted decades. The era we have all been living through is closing out, and democracy is turning on its axis once again. “Brilliantly, Reid-Henry calls for the salvation of democracy from the choices of its own leaders if it is to survive” (Samuel Moyn, Yale University).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781451684988
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	02/13/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	872
Sales rank:	399,571
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Simon Reid-Henry is a writer and prize-winning scholar. He is Associate Professor at Queen Mary, University of London and a Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Prologue: Two Helicopters 13

Part I Democracy Unbound (1971-)

1 The Unraveling 27

2 The Crisis of Capitalism 58

3 The Reckoning 108

4 A Split in the World 160

5 "Let Fury Have the Hour" 191

6 The Victory: Remaking Europe 237

Part II Novus Ordo Seclorum? (1989-)

7 America and "A World Transformed" 273

8 The Great Convergence 313

9 A Democratic Peace? 355

10 The New Prosperity 381

11 Farewell to All That 419

12 Blueprints for the New Millennium 466

Part III Victory without Peace (2001-)

13 The Assault on Freedom 503

14 In the Shadow of War 553

15 The Great Recession 591

16 Back to the Streets 643

17 Crisis upon Crisis 693

18 Epilogue: The End of an Era? 736

Acknowledgments 755

Notes 759

Index 833

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/01/2019

With this latest work, Reid-Henry (geography, Queen Mary Coll., Univ. of London; The Political Origins of Inequality) details how states and economies have changed from 1970 to the present, and how the consequences of those changes affect, and take hold over, popular government in supposedly democratic Western societies. The author pursues this transformation along two axes, political and economic, showing how changes in both arenas have interacted with current crises to create a near perfect storm of change in the notion and practices of what it means to be a democracy today—long-held notions and practices on the importance of equality, including the idea that everyone has the right to be heard, have been put aside in favor of market freedom and the ascendancy of a new economic elite. Reid-Henry writes as a historian but comes across accessibly: this is what happened and here is where we are now. He concludes not with recommendations for reform so much as a plea for hope. VERDICT One of the important books of the current dialog on Western democracy. All serious scholars and informed political science and history readers should find it worth the effort.—David Keymer, Cleveland

Library Journal

"Simon Reid-Henry has written a superbly informed and riveting historical analysis of our contemporary era, which opened in the 1970s and, as he brilliantly demonstrates, continues to transform the premises of Western democracies.” —Charles S. Maier, Harvard University

“Exploding the myth that current troubles are due to an attack by malignant outsiders on a 'liberal order' crafted in 1945, Simon Reid-Henry shows that our current travails make sense as part of the self-conscious turn by mainstream elites to a neoliberal understanding of democracy in the 1970s — and the intensification of their mistake after the fall of communism in the 1990s. Brilliantly, Reid-Henry calls for the salvation of democracy from the choices of its own leaders if it is to survive.” —Samuel Moyn, Yale University

“Supremely readable and illuminating.”—The Bookseller

“[A] colossal history of the last half-century.” —Sunday Times

“A monumental and nuanced history of the past half-century.” —Irish Times

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