Industrialized warfare and the fighting of total war are central to the explanation of democratisation in Europe and the USA

By Michele Boselli

War is not only among the six explanatory factors of democratization discussed in Democratization by David Potter and David Goldblatt, but according to this latter it is even one of the two most important along with the economic development and other consequences of capitalist industrialisation, the other four explanatory factors being: social divisions (for example the emergence of urban working classes, or gender inequality); the shape of their relationship with state and political institutions; civil society (balancing the power of the state by empowering previously excluded classes); and finally political culture and ideas, although this is a factor related to education and values such as religion which is questionable in having been highlighted, disputed or ignored by different schools of thought.

Speaking of schools of thought, the aim of this essay will be to discuss the relation between war and democracy from both the structural and transitional theories approaches, which complement each other well in providing a picture of the long-term factors in which conditions for democratisation mature (the structural theory), and the short-term igniting elements that in such historical and social environment trigger an acceleration in the democratisation process (the transitional one). In describing the struggle for democratisation between two opposing coalitions (authoritarian and democratic), the structural theory is particularly useful in identifying which social group under what circumstances will be member of such coalitions, while short-term transition theory identifies “who can get the upper hand in creating, manipulating and implementing institutional change once the decision to embark in a period of democratisation is taken” (Goldblatt).

Among structural theorists, Swede Goran Therborn is the one who takes more account of the impact of war in explaining democratisation. According to him, national mobilisation in war play an important role in how democratisation could be obtained, and this is demonstrated by the crucial acceleration received by processes of democratisation after both world wars. Indeed, historians view the First world War as one of the major turning points in history, the end of the “long XIX century”, that was so called because it was a period of change begun in the 1760s with the industrial revolution and the French and American revolutions.

During the long century, along with the strengthening of the nation-state (in the case of America the establishment of a new one), wars lasted longer, became more expensive to undertake and required a much broader social mobilisation. But those who were expected to fight for a nation were unwilling to do so without something in return, without some say in the running of the state. Therefore, the bigger the mobilisation of large numbers of soldiers, the greater the probability for more representative government as the outcome for the winning states, and even more so for the losers, as Goldblatt says:

“The First World War is pivotal in the history of democracy, in that it accelerates the processes of democratisation which are already occurring inside nation-states, for example Italy and Britain. In addition, it shatters the legitimacy of political power of the old authoritarian regimes that existed in Austria, Hungary and Germany, and were holding up against the forces of democratisation prior to this”.

However, this was not bound to last, and the first part of the following “short XX century” ending with the collapse of communism in 1989, that in the interwar-period of 1919-1939, saw the crisis of modern democracy and the rise of fascist and nazist dictatorships in most of  Europe. In order to explain this catastrophic failure of democratisation, the introduction of transitional theory is needed because it suits the analysis of short-term contingent factors rather than longer-term structural factors. According to the main transitional theorist, Dankwart Rustow, transition to democracy requires an essential background condition (an established nation-state), then a phase pf preparation, followed by a deliberate decision to institutionalise democratic procedures, and finally habituation. It is this last phase that he former empires of central Europe lacked because the war caused socio-economic and political earthquakes which damages lasted over a decade, thus contributing to the unprecedented crisis of the 1930s. furthermore, not only the socio-economic and political structures of the countries involved were dramatically changed, but also the sense of security necessary for a gradual transition to a sound democracy was destroyed, and the effort to restore stability in Europe with a Treaty of Versailles humiliating for Germany, far from ending the threat of future wars laid the foundations for a second, more destructive ear in 1939.

Democracy, in short, “is born of conflict, even violence, never as a result of simply peaceful evolution” writes Goldblatt in Democratisation referring to the transitional theory, and elaborates: “war is ambiguous: while it can accelerate democratisation, the consequences of war and defeat can retard democratisation”. David Potter agrees: “international war has been associated with both democratisation and authoritarianism”.

Now that we have taken the broad picture of democratisation in Europe up to the Second World War, it will be worth to discuss the peculiar democratisation on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, characterised by a unique feature that made it different from the European experience: the presence of a consistent minority of African-Americans. As in many European countries, women remained excluded from American politics until the First World War, but African-Americans long after. The American War of Independence of 1776 had no impact on their status and the Reconstruction after the Civil War of 1861-65, when Northern military triumph put an end to slavery and officially made slaves citizens, left them still marginalised, segregated in special walks of life and not allowed to take part in the primary elections to choose the candidates of the Democratic party dominant in the South (on the ground that primaries were an internal affair of a private body), because the former slave owners emerged as its political leaders. Even in Washington, at federal level, African-Americans did not find allies in Northern politicians because procedures in the Congress which effectively handed control to the very racist white Southerners, und unwillingness by their Northerner party members to bother them risking losing elections.

The conditions to prepare the exit from this dead-end situation were laid with the mass migration of African-Americans from the agricultural Southern states (in particular Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina) to the industrialised states of the North (Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington DC) during the period between the two world wars, when President Roosevelt’s New Deal determined a coalition of liberal interests (rise of labour, more federal government) in opposition to the South. A further step ahead was again war: African-American servicemen fought a Second World War which was, among other, against racism, and their segregation in the Army became an apparent contradiction. Finally, a charismatic black leadership was found in the person of Martin Luther King, preacher of Gandhian non-violence, and the outrage for the brutal repression by the police in his civil disobedience actions, for the first time broadcasted by television to the whole nation, led to the Civil Rights and Voting Acts of 1964-65.

In conclusion, we have seen how wars have been central explanatory factors of democratisation in the Western World, where the dominance of liberal democracy is a military achievement as well as the result of economic growth. In particular, the First World War indicated in liberal democracy an alternative to authoritarian monarchies; the Second World War had a tremendous impact in restoring the long-term trend: the future of European democracies hung on its outcome, both in the Western world and in Eastern Europe, where it left a legacy of totalitarism; and finally it was the developing dynamics of the Cold War against that communist authoritarianism which has a decisive impact on the course of democratisation in the countries examined, for example in the exclusion from government of radical actors to the advantage of moderate ones in the German and Italian democracies of the late 1940s and those of Portugal and Spain thirty years later; or, again, in the inclusion of African-Americans in US politics. Here is a final synthesis of these phenomena in David Goldblatt’s words:

“The First World Ward, the Second World War and the Cold War have been enduring major factors in shaping and forcing struggles for democratisation. Perhaps the most important thing, though, about the fight of those immense, industrialised wars, is that politicians and ruling élites simply cannot ask their citizens to fight industrialised wars while simultaneously excluding them from some kind of share in political power”.