Intellectuals and the Crisis of Politics in the Interwar Period and Beyond A Transnational History

This volume offers a broad-ranging and comprehensive analysis of the history and theory of the political idea of 'crisis', from the interwar period through to the present day. It considers how the multiple crises of civilization, capitalism, social cohesion, liberalism, democracy, socialism, and the nation-state were conceptualized; how these spheres of crisis became entangled; and who the intellectuals, politicians and experts were who employed these discourses. Intellectuals and the Crisis of Politics in the Interwar Period and Beyond maps the range of meanings the term 'crisis' has borne and the roles it has performed across disciplines and countries, de-centering the dominant narrative that takes Western European positions and developments as normative. It especially focuses on the historical roots of two key contemporary contesters of liberal democracy: neoliberalism and populism, and presents an innovative analysis of the roots of contemporary illiberalism in Europe. Bringing these ideas into the present day, Balázs Trencsényi offers ideas on how a reflective and self-critical liberal democratic political position could be defined and defended in our current predicament, which is increasingly compared to the interwar period and is often described as a “polycrisis”.

1 - Introduction: The Faces of Crisis
2 - The Morphology of Modern Crisis Discourses
3 - Crisis of the Mind and Spirit
4 - Crisis of Capitalism
5 - Crisis of Social Cohesion
6 - Crisis of Liberalism
7 - Crisis of Democracy
8 - Crisis of Socialism
9 - Crisis of the Nation-State and the International System
10 - Long Shadows of the Interwar Crises
11 - Conclusion: The Politics of Crisis

Balázs Trencsényi is Professor in the History Department at Central European University (CEU) and Director of the CEU Institute for Advanced Study in Budapest. His main field of interest is the history of modern political thought in East Central Europe. He is the co-author of A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe, vols. I-II (OUP, 2016-8) and co-editor of European Regions and Boundaries: A Conceptual History (Berghahn Books, 2017) and Brave New Hungary: Mapping the "System of National Cooperation” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019), among others.