The project-state and its rivals : a new history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries / Charles S. Maier.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Maier, Charles S., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Twentieth century.

Twenty-first century.

Political sociology.

Politics and culture--History--20th century.

Politics and culture.

Politics and culture--History--21st century.

Politics, Practical--Social aspects.

Politics, Practical.

Genre:

History.

History

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 510 pages) : illustrations, charts

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England : Harvard University Press, 2023.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

"A new and original history of the forces that shaped the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We thought we knew the story of the twentieth century. For many in the West, after the two world conflicts and the long cold war, the verdict was clear: democratic values had prevailed over dictatorship. But if the twentieth century meant the triumph of liberalism, as many intellectuals proclaimed, why have the era's darker impulses-ethnic nationalism, racist violence, and populist authoritarianism-revived? The Project-State and Its Rivals offers a radical alternative interpretation that takes us from the transforming challenges of the world wars to our own time. Instead of the traditional narrative of domestic politics and international relations, Charles S. Maier looks to the political and economic impulses that propelled societies through a century when territorial states and transnational forces both claimed power, engaging sometimes as rivals and sometimes as allies. Maier focuses on recurring institutional constellations: project-states including both democracies and dictatorships that sought not just to retain power but to transform their societies; new forms of imperial domination; global networks of finance; and the international associations, foundations, and NGOs that tried to shape public life through allegedly apolitical appeals to science and ethics. In this account, which draws on the author's studies over half a century, Maier invites a rethinking of the long twentieth century. His history of state entanglements with capital, the decline of public projects, and the fragility of governance explains the fraying of our own civic culture-but also allows hope for its recovery."--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction: History’s protagonists

Part One. The era of world wars

1. Paths to the project state

2. The promise of resource empires

3. The realm of governance and the web of capital, 1918-1939

Part Two. Mid-century ambitions

4. Projects for the postwar: nations, empires, and governance, 1940s-1960s

5. Countervailing power? Capital's projects and their limits, 1948-1960s

6. Contesting the postwar order: coal, steel, oil, and dollars, 1958-1973

Part Three. Contending projects since the 1970s

7. Deploying governance

8. Reinventions, 1796-1990s

9. Convergences and catastrophe: states, governance, and capital

10. The populist interval and the return of authoritarianism.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 395-488) and index.

Description based on online resource (viewed 24 April 2024), publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Maier, Charles S. The project-state and its rivals.

ISBN:

9780674293175

0674293177

9780674293182 (EPUB)

OCLC:

1377492206