Title: innovative approach to democratic collapse
Review: Bermeo takes a very innovative approach to very common questions in the study of democratic collapse during the interwar years. One of the more common tropes in the field is that citizens voted democracy out in Germany and Hitler came to power constitutionally. Bermeo shows that the truth is much more complicated. She argues that anti-democratic parties rarely won a majority at the ballot box. Rather, elites co-opted social movements in order to stifle democracy. She uses detailed comparative historical analysis to show what happened when. I do wish the book took the logical next step and generalized the argument to citizen participation in politics at large. Do citizens ever matter in regime transitions, or do elites only hold the key? Despite this, the book is a much needed corrective, and moreover an enjoyable read.
Is this product review negative?