Western Europe
From reconstruction to
recovery & beyond
Cold war tensions
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Berlin Blockade & Airlift, 1948-49
Korean War
Sputnik launched (1957)
U-2 incident: American spy plane captured
(1958)
Cuban missile crisis
Berlin Wall constructed, 1961
Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
Skirmishes & tensions along iron
curtain
Cold war as source of stability?
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Divided Europe is a stable Europe
Supranational alliances limit options for foreign policy
Structures developed
• GATT
• European Community
• EFTA
• to facilitate trade
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Focus primarily on economy, well-being
If countries involved in conflict, it is external & concerned
with diminishing reach -- e.g. battles over de-colonization
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Indonesia (Netherlands)
Indo-China (France)
Malaya (UK)
Kenya (UK)
Algeria (France)
Economic outlook
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Sustained economic growth in 1950s & ’60s
Successful state intervention in most
economies:
• Counter-cyclical management (Keynsian
demand management)
• Managed capitalism
 Voluntary economic planning (France)
 In some countries, coordination by ‘social
partners (trade union federations &
employers associations)
 Governments managing business cycle
• Expansion and elaboration of welfare states
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Full employment & labour shortages by mid
’50s
The UK: post-war consensus
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`Butskellism:’ Labour and Conservatives agree
on
• Mixed economy, managed to ensure full employment
• Desirability of welfare state to ensure minimum levels of
subsistence
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Consensus reflects:
• Conservatives’ acceptance of most of Labour’s
nationalizations
• Labour leadership’s recognition that most of its goals
can be achieved in the context of a mixed economy
• Agreement on tools of Keynsian economics – demand
management
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1950s = time of relative prosperity:
• Harold MacMillan: ‘you never had it so good’
UK: Economic problems in 1960s
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Slower rates of economic growth
Frequent strikes, troubled labour relations
• Strong trade unions, craft-based,
frequent jurisdictional disputes
Aging industrial plant reflecting
• Earlier industrialization
• Relative lack of wartime destruction
Unsuccessful attempts to imitate France’s
indicative (voluntary) economic planning
4th Republic France
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Ongoing urbanization and industrialization
• facilitated by economic planning, state-directed
modernization
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Ongoing conflict over form of government
Chronic cabinet instability:
• 26 cabinets between 1946 & 1958
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Ongoing conflict over decolonization
• Indochina
• Algeria
The Fifth Republic
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Presidential regime established in 1958,
following threatened military coup
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxqGUJUp0ng&feature=related
• De Gaulle summoned back to power
• Proposes mixed presidential-parliamentary
regime
• Negotiates Algerian independence
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Presidential Republic brings relative stability
• Entrenches right: controls Presidency &
parliament until 1981
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Yet, government nearly toppled in 1968,
following massive student strikes, occupation
of buildings, demonstrations
Federal Republic of Germany
(FRG)
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Under allied guidance, return to earlier
constitutionalism
Emphasis on rechtstaat – a ‘state of law’
Rapid reduction in the number of political
parties
• 1949 as “the last election of Weimar”
• Introduction of the 5% electoral threshold in
1953
• Rapid elimination of smaller parties
Predominance of Christian Democratic Union,
Social Democrats, and Free Democrats
The economic miracle
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Cooperation at home
• ‘social market economy’
• Cooperation of unions, employers, investment
banks
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Stability of Deutschmark
• under watchful eye of Bundesbank (an
independent central bank) within new
international regime
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Rapid economic recovery
• facilitated through 1961 by influx of refugees
from the east
• Marshall Plan aid
• Recovery elsewhere
Cementing Germany into the West
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Loyal ally:
• FRG allowed to join NATO in 1955
• Frontier in Cold War
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Loyal European: founding member
of
• European Coal & Steel Community
(1951)
• Euratom and European Economic
Community (EEC), also 1956
The new party politics
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Ascendency of Christian Democratic
Union (CDU) under Konrad
Adenauer
• CDU as a volkspartei or people’s party,
open to all comers (Protestants as well as
Catholics)
• Campaigns on success of ‘social market
economy’
• ‘No experiments’
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Social Democrats (SPD)
• As before, a Marxist party, but willing to
work within the system
• Electoral support levels off at ~ 33%
• 1959 Party Congress (Bad Godesberg)
expunges all references to class conflict
Free Democrats (FDP): small liberal
party, able to ally with CDU (1949-1966)
or later, SPD (1969-82)
Germany in the 1950s
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A sense of exhaustion?
Quiescence?
• A society turned in on itself
• Discomfort with conflict
• Comfortable with Adenauer’s campaign
promise: “No experiments”
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Silence: little public or private discussion
of holocaust
Strong sense of law (rechtstaat) – laws
must be obeyed
A puzzle:
How was it possible to establish liberal
democracy in the aftermath of Nazism?
 Impact of affluence
 Narrowing of political agenda and political
options
• Exclusion of extreme parties and options
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The levelling effects of Nazism (view of
Ralf Dahrendorf)
Italy
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Pre-eminent position of Christian
Democracy (DC)
• Draws support from Vatican, practicing
Catholics
• Governs, typically in coalition with others
• Extends support via clientelismo
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Principal opposition
• Italian Communist Party (PCI)
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Governing party in Bologna, Emilia Romagna
Steady growth through 1970s
• Italian Social Movement (MSI) – small ultra
right party
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Persistent North-South & regional divisions
A new Europe?
By the early 1960s:
 Most colonies shed, sometimes more
smoothly than others:
• Britain manages,
• traumatic for France, Netherlands, Belgium
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Earlier cleavages, conflicts for the most
part channelled, under control…
Governments play active role in economic
life
Beginnings of affluence
New social mores
Balance sheet
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Economic stability
Conflicts contained
Political stability
• Minimal support for extreme politics
• Few changes in government: coalitions endure
over several elections
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A Germany, partitioned
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which France tolerate
with which the west could live
that could be integrated into Europe
In which normality could prevail (eventually)