The Resilience of the Old Regime

David Art is Professor of Political Science at Tufts University. He is the author of The Politics of the Nazi Past in Germany and Austria (Cambridge, 2006) and Inside the Radical Right (Cambridge, 2011) and is a faculty affiliate at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University.

'The Resilience of the Old Regime is a bold and original take on the 'first wave of democratization.' Art has painstakingly recovered the significance of the undemocratic regimes that dominated nineteenth-century Europe. Like today's authoritarian regimes, these incorporated trappings of democracy. But they were neither transitional nor unstable steps on a road to democracy. They were successful attempts to preserve elite power, and survived internal challenges until wrecked by global war. The book will change how we think of the origins of democracy, and suggests that the regimes being created today to preserve elite power might be more resilient than usually appreciated.' David A. Bateman, Cornell University

• 1. The first wave and the study of democracy; 2. Paths around democracy in Europe; 3. Designing competitive Oligarchy in the United Kingdom; 4. The European Origins of competitive authoritarianism; 5. Wilhelmine Germany and Edwardian England; 6. Authoritarian resilience in Northern Europe; 7. Competitive Oligarchy to competitive authoritarianism in Italy; 8. World war one and democratization in Europe; 9. Conclusion.