christina democracy in XX.pdf

Christian Democracy in Twentieth-Century EuropePolitical Catholicism in Europe 1918-1965 by Tom Buchanan; Martin Conway; Catholic Politicsin Europe 1918-1945 by Martin Conway; L'Europe de la Démocratie chrétienne by Jean-Dominique Durand; The Cross and the Ballot. Catholic Political Parties in Germany,Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, 1785-1985 by Ellen L. Evans; ChristianDemocracy in Europe. A Comparative Perspective by David Hanley; Christian Dem ...Review by: Wolfram KaiserJournal of Contemporary History, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 127-135Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3180674 .

Accessed: 22/05/2014 12:37

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Sage Publications, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal ofContemporary History.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.144.79.222 on Thu, 22 May 2014 12:37:24 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=sageltd

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3180674?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Journal of Contemporary History Copyright ? 2004 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, Vol 39(l), 127-135. ISSN 0022-0094. DOI: 10.1 177/0022009404039888

Wolfram Kaiser

Review Article Christian Democracy in Twentieth-century Europe

Tom Buchanan and Martin Conway (eds), Political Catholicism in Europe 1918-1965, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996; pp. 312; ISBN 0 19 820319 5 Martin Conway, Catholic Politics in Europe 1918-1945, London, Routledge, 1997; pp. 118; ISBN 0 415 06401 5 Jean-Dominique Durand, L'Europe de la Democratie chretienne, Paris, Editions Complexe, 1995; ISBN 2 87027 536 6 Ellen L. Evans, The Cross and the Ballot. Catholic Political Parties in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, 1785-1985, Boston, Humanities Press, 1999; pp. 300; ISBN 0 391 04095 2 David Hanley (ed.), Christian Democracy in Europe. A Comparative Per- spective, London, Pinter, 1994; pp. 222; ISBN 1 85567 382 7 Emiel Lamberts (ed.), Christian Democracy in the European Union (1945/ 1995), Leuven, Leuven University Press, 1997; pp. 511; ISBN 90 6186 8084 Roberto Papini, II coraggio della democrazia. Sturzo e l'Internazionale popolare tra le due guerre, Rome, Edizioni Studium, 1995; pp. 288; ISBN 88 382 3741 7 Roberto Papini, The Christian Democrat International, Lanham, Boulder, New York and London, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997; pp. 288; ISBN 0 8476 8300 1 Hans-Joachim Veen (ed.), Christlich-demokratische und konservative Parteien in Westeuropa, vol. 4: Schweden, Norwegen, Finnland, Ddnemark, Pader- born, Munich, Vienna and Zurich, Schoningh, 1994; pp. 527; ISBN 3 506 79321 7 Hans-Joachim Veen (ed.), Christlich-demokratische und konservative Parteien in Westeuropa vol. 5: Schweiz, Niederlande, Belgien, Luxemburg, Euro- pdische Demokratische Union (EDU), Europaische Volkspartei (EVP), Pader- born, Munich, Vienna and Zurich, Schoningh, 2000; pp. 570; ISBN 3 506 79351 9

Historical research on parties in Europe has tended to concentrate on those of the Left, especially Socialism and Social Democracy. In contrast, the history of political Catholicism and Christian Democracy in twentieth-century Europe was for a long time underdeveloped. The fragmented state of research appears


Wolfram Kaiser





Wolfram Kaiser





Wolfram Kaiser






Journal of Contemporary History Vol 39 No I Journal of Contemporary History Vol 39 No I Journal of Contemporary History Vol 39 No I Journal of Contemporary History Vol 39 No I

to have been due mainly to four factors. First, Socialism and Social Democracy are superficially characterized by more ideological and organizational continuity from the nineteenth century through to the beginning of the twenty- first, making their long-term analysis easier as in, for example, Donald Sassoon's recent study of West European socialism.' Secondly, the parties of the Left also have a tradition of greater ideological debate and written party programmes, facilitating their analysis from the perspective of a history of ideas. Thirdly, they already saw themselves as internationalist parties with at least some organized transnational links in the First and Second Internationals in the nineteenth century, suggesting their international and comparative study. Finally, Socialist and Social Democratic parties, like Democrats and Liberals in the nineteenth century, are self-declared parties of progress and societal change which are usually easier to study and perhaps a more attractive object for research even independent of the historians' own political prefer- ences.

There are other reasons, however, why the all-European and comparative study of political Catholicism and Christian Democracy played only a marginal role in continental European historical research until the mid-1990s. When in most West European countries social history became fashionable in the 1960s, the established party history suddenly appeared to be old-fashioned political history. In this situation, many historians of Socialism and Social Democracy avoided their marginalization within the profession through their

openness towards the many impulses from social history, often redirecting their research towards the history of the working class and related topics. Historians of political Catholicism and Christian Democracy initially stuck to their established approach, which was mainly concerned with the organizational history of parties and their ideas and programmes. Most of them took much longer to take an interest in the social and cultural aspects of party history. Due to the religious and confessional origins of political Catholicism and Christian Democracy, moreover, they were more negatively affected by the temporary marginalization of the history of religion in general and that of Catholicism in particular, which in the tradition of Max Weber appeared to

many social historians as little more than a historical barrier to modernization, if not (as to Karl Marx) as opium for the people.

Aside from the methodological marginalization of party history, its extreme

politicization in continental Europe, above all, also contributed to its frag- mentation. In the academic cultures of countries like Germany, the Nether-

lands, Belgium and Austria, which are traditionally characterized by a highly sophisticated political pillarization, research on (political) Catholicism was

and still is mostly carried out by Catholics, and that on Christian Democratic

parties by members of those parties. As in the case of the Social Democrats as well as, in many cases, the Liberals, historical party research was often

1 Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism. The West European Left in the Twentieth

Century (London 1996).


































128 128 128 128



Kaiser Christian Democracy in Twentieth-century Europe Kaiser Christian Democracy in Twentieth-century Europe Kaiser Christian Democracy in Twentieth-century Europe Kaiser Christian Democracy in Twentieth-century Europe

conducted in the postwar period as the continuation of the nineteenth-century culture wars by other means. Political foundations and societal organizations linked to the parties often co-ordinated and financed such research. They were usually also (if not exclusively) interested in the political use of research results to legitimate 'their' party agenda and programmatic demands. This extreme degree of politicization contributed, among other things, to a great fixation with national history and domestic political faultlines which also prevented an earlier opening towards a more all-European and comparative study of the history of political Catholicism and Christian Democratic parties.

British and American historians as well as younger continental European historians who do not wish to be associated with particular confessional, academic or political party agendas, no longer participate in the old trench warfare. Nonetheless, they often still get caught in the cross-fire as, for example, the young German historian from Gottingen, Frank Bosch, whose excellent study of the history of the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) after 1945 (including a useful chapter on the more than dubious forms of party financing) was immediately attacked by the Catholic review mafia.2 Both the lower degree of cartellization of historical party research and progressive European integration have contributed to a greater interest in the similarities and differences of political Catholicism and Christian Democratic parties in (Western) Europe also outside the Anglo-American research commu- nity which has traditionally been more interested in pan-European phenomena. The formation in 1976 of the European People's Party (EPP) and the first direct election of the European Parliament in 1979 prompted publications with such a perspective. Dating from this period are the historically-informed political science books by R.E.M. Irving on Christian Democratic parties in Western Europe3 and John H. Whyte on the political behaviour of Catholics in western democracies, including extra-European states,4 as well as the general historical introductory texts by Jean-Marie Mayeur and Karl-Egon Lonne on political Catholicism and Christian Democratic parties in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe.5 In the meantime, several books have been published since the mid-1990s which take an increasingly all-European comparative and transnational approach to their topic.

Compared to the study, The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe by the political scientist Stathis N. Kalyvas which deals with the nineteenth century only,6 Ellen L. Evans covers two centuries in her book, The Cross and the

2 Frank Bosch, Die Adenauer-CDU. Griindung, Aufstieg und Krise einer Erfolgspartei 1945- 1969 (Stuttgart and Munich 2001). 3 R.E.M. Irving, The Christian Democratic Parties of Western Europe (London 1979). 4 John H. Whyte, Catholics in Western Democracies. A Study in Political Behaviour (Dublin 1981). 5 Jean-Marie Mayeur, Des partis catholiques a la democratie chretienne XIXe-XXe siecles (Paris 1980); Karl-Egon Lonne, Politischer Katholizismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt 1986). 6 Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (Ithaca and London 1996).













129 129 129 129




Ballot. Like Kalyvas, she includes Germany, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands. In addition, she also discusses the Swiss case, although not that of France or Italy. Unfortunately, this highly-descriptive comparison, which often reads more like a textbook, is very unbalanced. Evans, the author of a book on the Centre Party,7 is really a historian of Germany. This is probably why her chapters on Germany are very much more elaborate and sophisticated than those on other countries, which is only partially justified by the leading role of the Centre Party in European political Catholicism. Moreover, the

enlarged Central European perspective, which is so influential in American history of nineteenth-century Europe, is not entirely convincing. Evans could have restricted her study to Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, all of which were confessionally mixed with Catholicism in a minority position. As she includes more than these countries, however, it is questionable why Italy, of all countries, should be excluded, when the Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI) was a large people's party after 1918, although only for a few years, and the Democrazia Cristiana (DC) dominated Italian politics for almost 50 years after 1944-5. Evans's book is divided into five time periods. Surprisingly, she does not really discuss collaboration, resistance and exile during the second world war, as if political Catholicism did not exist in this divisive period. In view of the thesis first developed by Walter Lipgens,8 that the shape of postwar Western Europe and the process of integration were already decided during the war, not least by Christian Democrats, it would surely have been important at this point to discuss the contested question as to the degree of con-

tinuity or discontinuity in political Catholicism and Christian Democracy from the interwar to the postwar period.

Compared to Kalyvas and Evans, the book by Martin Conway, originally a

historian of contemporary Belgium, is a much more concise introduction to

the history of political Catholicism in interwar Europe, and in the best Anglo- Saxon tradition is sophisticated, yet accessible. Conway treats the pre-history of his topic in a separate chapter on the nineteenth century before dealing with

the 1920s, the 1930s and the second world war from an all-European perspective, including Eastern Europe. Conway refutes the often teleological thesis of

many modernization historians who argued for a long time that (political) Catholicism (as well as religion more generally) was destined to decline and

eventually to disappear as a result of industrialization, modernization and

secularization. According to Conway, the interwar period demonstrated its

great vitality as well as volatility. In the first decade after 1918 political Catholicism was 'more emphatically modern and democratic' than before and

also a 'truly European political force' (7). Later, however, the authoritarian

temptations increased to develop an anti-parliamentary alternative to liberal

7 Ellen L. Evans, The German Center Party: 1870-1933. A Study in Political Catholicism

(Carbondale, IL 1981). 8 See esp. Walter Lipgens, Die Anfinge der europaischen Einigungspolitik 1945-1950, vol. 1: 1945-1947 (Stuttgart 1977).














































130 130 130 130



Kaiser. Christian Democracy in Twentieth-century Europe Kaiser. Christian Democracy in Twentieth-century Europe Kaiser. Christian Democracy in Twentieth-century Europe Kaiser. Christian Democracy in Twentieth-century Europe

democracy with corporatist structures based on the organization of the pro- fessions. Conway rightly emphasizes that many Catholics regarded as exem- plary the authoritarian Portugal under Salazar with its 1933 constitution, Estado Novo, or the Austrian Stiindestaat dictatorship under Dollfuss and Schuschnigg.

To a large extent, Conway attributes the disillusionment of wide sections of political Catholicism with liberal democracy in the 1930s to the economic crisis after 1929. Yet, he puts the economic explanation into perspective by drawing attention to the renewed influence of much older anti-democratic reflexes, for example in his discussion of the increasingly more influential right wing of the Centre Party under the leadership of prelate Kaas (47). Similarly, other European parties also experienced a deepening rift between the pro- democratic Christian Democrats and the more conservative and often anti- democratic Catholics, resulting in political exile or participation in the resistance of many democrats, and anything from political passivity to active collaboration with regimes like that of Vichy France. Conway does not regard the end of the second world war as marking a real break in the parties' history, however. Democratically transformed, the new Christian Democratic parties profited from the discrediting of the old conservative Right, from the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union and their support for non-socialist welfare state reforms. Initially, however, these parties were still largely parties of organized political Catholicism. Only as a result of the weakening of their societal milieu and of the parties themselves and their electoral support did the Christian Democrats become more non- or interconfessional. According to Conway, their structural crisis in the 1960s marks the real turning-point in the development of Christian Democracy in twentieth-century Europe.

In another monograph, Jean-Dominique Durand deals with the history of Christian Democracy from a comparative, but strictly West European perspective. Unlike all the other books in this review, however, it is based on a very narrow understanding of Christian Democracy, which only includes the pro- democratic variety reconciled to the national constitutional state in the tradition of Luigi Sturzo and Marc Sagnier. In a traditional perspective of a history of ideas, Durand discusses at length the ideological basis of this particular Christian Democratic tendency, especially the role of religion, Christian personalism and Sturzo's 'popolarismo'. On this basis he comes to the conclusion that the Christian Democrats always had 'absolute confidence in democracy' which was later also reflected in the papal declaration against totalitarianism in his Christmas address of 1945 (133). It is only possible to write such a success story when one concentrates selectively on some Christian Democratic thinkers. Sturzo and Sangier were such thinkers, but within the political Catholicism in their respective countries in the interwar period, they repre- sented minority views. Moreover, while Sturzo was opposed to Mussolini's totalitarian organization of corporatism from above, he failed to show how a corporate organization of society from below with real decision-making powers for professional organizations was compatible with a pluralist, repre-










131 131 131 131




sentative liberal-democratic constitutional state. Durand does not discuss the essential ambivalence of corporatist concepts or the positive attitude of many 'progressive' Catholics to clerical-authoritarian political systems as in Portugal and Austria. It is also not convincing to include the Vatican in the democratic continuity thesis. The Church hierarchy only began to oppose national socialism and fascism more clearly in the 1930s. Even the Christmas message of 1945 was still much more informed by traditional anti-communism than any enthusiasm for democracy.

In view of the diversity of political Catholicism and Christian Democracy and the resulting problems in writing comparative monographic studies on this topic, it is perhaps not surprising that several books resulting from team- work of national historians have also been published in recent years. The first of these, edited by Dean Hanley, approaches the topic from a historically- informed contemporary 'European Studies' perspective. In the first section of more theoretical chapters, Kees van Kersbergen argues in favour of treating Christian Democracy in Europe as a distinctive phenomenon. These parties were never simply conservative parties under a different name, parties of the centre without a clear programmatic profile or 'catch all' or people's parties (33). Instead, these parties had traditions which to some extent assimilated ele- ments of liberal individualism and socialist collectivism, but which had their own guiding ideas of personalism, solidarity and subsidiarity. They were also anchored in particular social and religious milieus integrating from the beginning (unlike most continental European Socialist, Liberal or Conservative

parties) voters from all social classes (35). The second section of this book

comprises chapters on Belgium and the Netherlands, Italy, Austria and

Germany, all of which have a similar structure discussing the parties' organization, their membership and voters, their ideology and government policies after 1945. The third and final section includes chapters on what Hanley calls

'peripheral' case studies of the Christian (Lutheran) parties of Scandinavia,

especially Norway, as well as France and Britain. This section, however, is

somewhat incoherent as the different countries have very little in common, with not even a Christian party tradition in the British case.

The two books edited by Hans-Joachim Veen from the Konrad Adenauer

Foundation were published as volumes 4 and 5 in its series on Christian

Democratic and Conservative parties in Western Europe. The integration of

both party traditions in this series reflects the strong CDU preference from the

1960s for close co-operation between Christian Democratic and Conservative

parties in the EC/EU and thus has a programmatic dimension. From this

perspective, the inclusion of not only the Christian Lutheran, but also the

Conservative parties in Scandinavia in volume 4 appears unproblematic. The

chapters on countries all provide the reader with excellent overviews of these

little-known party traditions. Unfortunately, volume 5 is very heterogeneous and not clearly structured. It not only includes chapters on the three Benelux

states, but also on Switzerland and the transnational organizations, the EPP

and the European Democratic Union (comprising Conservative and some





























































132 132 132 132




Christian Democratic parties) founded in 1978. Whereas most chapters on individual countries are written by historians or political scientists, the latter two chapters are authored by Thomas Jansen, the former EPP secretary general, and Andreas Khol, the parliamentary party leader of the Austrian People's Party. Although both authors have a background in political science, this solution is less than ideal.

In contrast to the books edited by Hanley and Veen the volume edited by Tom Buchanan and Martin Conway adopts a strictly historical approach and only treats the period from 1918 through to the mid-1960s, identified by Conway as a significant turning-point in the history of Christian Democracy in Western Europe. As the book is not limited to Christian Democratic parties, the editors include Spain and Portugal, (although both countries only had active Catholic parties for a short spell in the 1920s and early 1930s), as well as Ireland. The Irish party system was not, of course, determined by different attitudes to Catholicism or the Catholic Church, but resulted from the conditions under which Irish independence was achieved in 1921 through the agree- ment with the British government on partitioning. The emphasis of this book is clearly on the interwar period. The chapters are particularly instructive concerning the corporatist concepts of political Catholicism as well as its 'enthusiastic support' (24) for authoritarian regimes. Taking a very different approach from Durand, Conway, in the introduction, convincingly demon- strates the pluralist nature of political Catholicism and Christian Democracy in the interwar period, reflected not least in varying attitudes to the Spanish Civil War. Mary Vincent, in her overview of the Spanish case, shows how within the Catholic party, CEDA, that emerged from the 1933 election as the largest single party and main opposition to the Socialist PSOE, the reform- oriented, pro-Republican forces were marginalized. Their militant anti- Marxism and corporatist concepts brought the majority in the party alongside the fascist Falange. With the exception of the regionalist Catholic parties from the Basque country and Catalonia, political Catholicism and the Church thus came out strongly in favour of Franco in the civil war.

In contrast, the book edited by Emiel Lamberts only deals with the Christian Democratic parties in the five 'core European' countries - France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and (West) Germany. The book only covers the postwar period, but it does so very systematically and in great detail. The book comprises studies of five countries, each of the parties' position in the political system, their wider societal role, their influence on the political constitution and constitutional reality, their economic and social policies and their societal and cultural policies. The comparative conclusions at the end of each section by Winfried Becker (109-20), Paul Lucardie (210-21), Emiel Lamberts (282-92), Michel Dumoulin (369-74) and Anton Rauscher (439-46) are particularly useful, although the last two are too short and somewhat superficial. Such comparative syntheses are very useful for those wishing to transcend national bounderies in analysing European historical themes and phenomena. They are also rare, however, probably because they are somewhat treacherous.










133 133 133 133




For example, Becker comes to the absurd conclusion (115) that the French MRP failed in postwar France because of the presidential political system and its majority voting which favoured a sharp Left/Right confrontation, with little room for Christian Democracy in the centre. Yet, the Left/Right divide in French politics had existed since the French Revolution. Moreover, the MRP had already suffered massive losses in elections during the Fourth Republic in the 1950s, a parliamentary system with proportional representation, declining from some 28 per cent of the vote in 1946 to some 11 per cent in 1953. As is well known, the presidential Fifth Republic constitution was only introduced in 1958. Becker also accepts too easily the Christian Democratic postwar rhetoric of non- or interconfessionalism. As Lucardie rightly emphasizes in his chapter, however, the social reality of membership and voters was initially very different. In France, for example, 75 per cent of believing Catholics voted MRP in 1946. The CDU, too, depended greatly on its extreme overrepresenta- tion among Catholic voters in the first two decades after 1949. The social reality only became more compatible with the interconfessional rhetoric from the 1960s onwards.

The book also includes two very short chapters on the transnational co-

operation of Christian Democratic parties. In recent years, with the creation of the EPP and the more intensive and supranational integration at the European level, including a greater role for the European Parliament, this has also become a more important topic for political science research, as two books on the EPP by Thomas Jansen and Karl Magnus Johansson show.9 Roberto

Papini deals with the historical dimension of institutionalized party co-

operation in his two books. In II coraggio della democrazia he reconstructs the

story of the short-lived Paris-based secretariat, SIPDIC, founded in 1925 to facilitate transnational contacts between individual politicians, without

attempting any real policy co-ordination. Due to the prevailing nationalist confrontation, these contacts were largely restricted to the Christian Demo- cratic Left, which often also had contacts with the international Christian Democratic trade union movement, the Interparliamentary Union or the Peace Movement. As Papini's study is too heavily based on Italian literature and Sturzo's private papers, however, he tends to exaggerate the Italian influence, with Sturzo appearing as the 'founding father' of European Christian

Democracy. This book is also very descriptive and does not really attempt to

integrate the study of the transnational Catholic party network in the wider

historical context of interwar Europe. Papini's second book, The Christian Democrat International, is the un-

revised translation of a study first published in Italian in 1986 and in French in 1988. After an introduction to the activities of SIPDIC, Papini deals with the

9 Thomas Jansen, The European People's Party: Origins and Development (London 1998)

[German 1996]; Karl Magnus Johansson, Transnational Party Alliances. Analysing the Hard-

Won Alliance between Conservatives and Christian Democrats in the European Parliament (Lund

1997).















1997).















1997).















1997).

134 134 134 134




transnational co-operation patterns of Christian Democratic parties not only in postwar Europe, but also beyond Europe in the East-Central European exile, Latin America and globally. This makes it unique and, as Robert Royal rightly states in the introduction to the English version (xii), 'a handy reference guide to the official charters and declarations' of transnational Christian Democracy in the twentieth century. As a competent historical study it is not nearly as useful, however, as it is only based on a small selection of original sources which are not correctly quoted, and written without the necessary critical distance from the topic. For a long time Papini worked for the Christian Democratic Study Centre in Rome, which gives him the global perspective, but also precludes him from critically assessing the opportunities and limits of transnational party co-operation.

Despite their deficiencies, all of these books taken together mark a very big step forward in research on political Catholicism and Christian Democracy in twentieth-century Europe. There is still a lot of research to be done, however, especially with respect to extending the comparative perspective to East- Central European countries and to the transnational dimension of Christian Democracy. A few years ago, with the rise of 'New' social democracy in much of Western Europe, centre-right people's parties appeared for some time to have entered a new period in their long-term decline, with their electoral support reduced by renewed Liberal parties as well as right-wing populism. In this case, the study of political Catholicism and Christian Democracy might have become of purely historical interest, without contemporary relevance. Christian Democracy and centre-right parties have too often been pronounced dead and Social Democracy predicted to be the hegemonic political force of the future, however, to formulate research agendas based on the rapidly- changing electoral fortunes of parties in the volatile pluralistic democracies of the early twenty-first century.

Wolfram Kaiser is Professor of European Studies at the University of Portsmouth and a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. His

publications include Using Europe, Abusing the Europeans. Britain and European Integration 1945-63 (London 1999) and (as co-editor

with H. Wohnout) Political Catholicism in Europe 1918-45 (London 2004) and (as co-editor with M. Gehler), Christian

Democracy in Europe since 1945 (London 2004). He is currently working on a study of transnational Christian Democracy in

twentieth-century Europe.






















135 135 135 135



Documents

christina democracy in XX.pdf