Why could politicians of religious minority backgrounds become national leaders in some countries soon after modern representative institutions were adopted, whereas in some other countries, almost all the national leaders have been from the religious majority background for decades if not centuries? I argue that the most important factor explaining the incidence of national leaders of a religious minority background or lack thereof is whether the main adversary in the constitutive conflict that established the nation-state was of the same religious sectarian background or not. Nations established in a constitutive conflict against an adversary of the same religion are much more likely to have national leaders of a religious minority background. Furthermore, political leaders of religious minority backgrounds have three “secular” paths out of their marginality, which is also determined by the combination and nature of the primary external and internal conflict of the nation. I examine these paths through the cases of Britain (liberalism), France (socialism), and Hungary and Italy (nationalism). Finally, I examine a world-historical example of pattern change, the rise of Catholic-origin national leaders in previously Protestant-led Germany, which was due to a new constitutive conflict (World War II and the Holocaust) that altered the national-religious configuration.

In this article I analyze Salvador Allende’s economic program and policies. I argue that the explosion of inflation during his administration (above 1,500% on a six-month annualized measure) was predictable, and I show that the government’s response to it was political. I postulate that runaway inflation generated major disaffection among the middle class and that that unhappiness paved the way to Pinochet’s coup d’état in 1973.

As labor in the capitalist system practically tripled to some three billion workers, solidary organizations of labor simultaneously dwindled in relative size and power. This is true globally but also for the historical core countries. While this is a paradox, it is not a contradiction. Capital is a (spatialized) social relationship. The globalization of capital since the 1970s has shifted the power relations with localized labor fundamentally in favor of capital, as Charles Tilly noted in this journal almost thirty years ago. Over time, power balances within capitalist states, and between capitalist states and transnationalizing capital, have reflected that basic class-relational shift. This article explains why the globalizing cycle of weakened labor may now be reversing.

This is an attempt to locate the idea of socialism and the socialist and working-class movements in history. This will here be done by relating the trajectory of socialism to capitalism, as a rival, and by highlighting the main social forces carrying the idea of socialism in the 20th century. These forces were two grand social dialectics, that of industrial capitalism and its generating working-class growth and strength; and, little studied, the dialectic of capitalist colonialism which needed and created a subordinated colonial intelligentsia, which came to organize and lead anti-colonial movements to independence, very often under a banner of socialism. Both dialectics have now largely expired. The victories of socialism were nowhere constructions of fully postcapitalist societies but vehicles of precapitalist development. Here achivements were considerable, as were socialist reforms within capitalist societies. However, catching up with its older and richer brother caitalism turned out an ever elusive goal of socialism, and the socialist horizon faded. A new postcapitalist vision is emerging with the climate crisis.

Russian Poland was among the most militant tsarist borderlands during the 1905–1907 Revolution in the Russian Empire. However, only a decade later, when revolutionary movements again loomed large and shook the whole region after 1917, Poland remained relatively calm. Forging a new statehood after 1918 rivaled the earlier popular drive toward social revolution. Revolution was aborted in Poland; in other rim regions of the Russian Empire, however, the situation evolved differently, and this scenario should not be taken as self-explanatory. The dynamic of political contention on the ground in the inter-revolutionary decade is the key to understand the pathways of the new state and its society. But the existing accounts deliver only a fragmentary picture, concentrating on the teleology of nation, nation state and its elites or party politics. Meanwhile, the dynamics of labor contention can be hardly squared with unanimous class or national mobilizations. This article addresses this gap drawing from an extensive collection of courses on social unrest and conflict in the Kingdom of Poland based on administrative sources from local Polish and central Russian archives (more than 3300 entries on contentious events). Covering broad available sources, it offers a picture of labor unrest spanning from tinier township workshops, insular, dispersed industrialization of smaller cities harboring quite large mills, to fully-fledged industrial power hubs. The findings show the large heterogeneity of conflict among urban workers. The initial enthusiasm of the 1905 upheaval did not hold sway for long. Workers were tired with the revolutionary mobilization, derailed by the state repression and reluctant to embark on political action again. The lore of 1905 was not an important point of reference for the forthcoming mobilizations. Instead, protests had their own rhythms and spatial patterns, resembling the pre-industrial calendar of festivities turning into insurgencies but also followed pan-imperial causes. Inter-ethnic tensions kicked in: within crews (mostly Polish-Jewish) but above all between rank-and-file workers and foremen, often of German origin. This plurality resulted in various possibilities to build a working class imagined community ranging from a single factory, through branch-wide solidarities, national filiation up to pan-imperial class alliance. Also the tsarist administration, interested in maintaining the basic stability of supply and keep the state going was an important factor. These heterogenous field of tensions did not form any cleavage conductive to singular mobilization. However, it was susceptible to broader political projects binding various claims. Such a project was a new Poland, supported by major parties and perceived by many as nothing less as a revolutionary state for a while promising anti-imperial self-assertion, national rights, political freedom, and social emancipation.

Among the dilemmas faced by labor, socialist, and other movements of the subaltern classes striving to change society over the past two centuries, three are discussed here: forms of ownership, bureaucracy and “big tent” formulas for both unity of the working class broadly defined, and alliances with movements of independent owners or undefined class status. Examples are drawn from various countries (France, Italy, Britain, the USA, Brazil, Korea) and from international programmatic discussions. Socialists, notably Marxists, shared the radical republican goal of a true democracy of equals, but differed on the extent of collective ownership (state, local, cooperative) needed in the economy, and the definition of privately owned personal goods that insured an individual’s dignity and independence. The rise and contraction of capitalist states with social services (“welfare states”) complicated the issue. Such movements also accumulated experiences with the growth of experts and/or bureaucrats, and the means to limit their privileges and transformation into a caste-type elite. Three environments which generate such phenomena are identified: social-democratic and big labor, post-capitalist states and, more recently, nongovernmental organizations. Finally, the author discusses alliances with broader social forces which include working-class and non-working-class interests, and the management of cross-class ideologies such as certain varieties of nationalism, feminism, environmentalism, and anti-tax movements.

In the history of the left, the conjuncture 1914–1917 is the “bifurcation point” per definition. Leaving an enduring mark on the labor movement, it also shaped subsequent historiographies. For the pro-Bolshevik left, 1914 epitomized the betrayal of a group of reformist leaders. Conversely, anti-communist social democrats regarded the Second International as an uncomfortable political heritage. Despite irreconcilable disputes, both traditions shared a lack of interest in defending the period 1889–1914, let alone delving into its history. The real take-off of Second International historiography came later and coincided with the outset of the Cold War, experiencing a “golden age” in the 1960s and 1970s. Studies of socialism lost momentum from the 1980s onwards, but the last 15 years have seen a resurgence of interest in the Second International and even a popular reappraisal of Karl Kautsky. Linking historiography to wider social and political phenomena, this article reflects on this new interest in the Second International in both activist and academic circles. The first section summarizes the historical significance of the International and examines how the crisis of 1914 became a crucial “bifurcation point” with significant political and historiographical impact. The second section explores recent trends in scholarly research on the subject. The third section provides an analysis of the vindication of Karl Kautsky among radicals and socialists in the United States over the past 10 years. The conclusion summarizes the main arguments and reflects on the contribution this analysis can make to a discussion about the “long cycle” of socialism.

In 1912, the Italian parliament approved the extension of male suffrage, making it ‘almost’ universal. This process of revising representation transformed the very idea of the relationship between citizens and the state and shaped a profoundly different Italy. The aim of this article is to trace both the process leading to the approval of universal suffrage and its impact on the party system. With a compilation and analysis of data developed from scratch for the elections of 1909 and 1913, it was possible to analyse the main dimensions of the two rounds in a disaggregated manner. Three aspects make 1913 a year of transition. First, the degree of competition in the electoral process, especially in the South, increased considerably. Second, the decline of liberal formations was not transformed into defeat, thanks only to the Catholic vote. Third, the birth of the Popular Party and the failure to create a mass party of conservatives were causes of the imbalance in the party structure.

The question of deradicalization looms large in the historiography of western European socialism. But in this contested field, the contributions of the New Left historian, Ralph Miliband, have been curiously neglected. Through his work on the British Labour Party, Miliband developed a distinctive account of deradicalization that foregrounds the fact that when parties enter government, party elites find themselves transplanted into new, alien institutions. Over time, he argued, they then come to internalize the worldviews of those institutions and reshape their parties accordingly. This essay presents the first quantitative and cross-national test of this “experience of governing hypothesis,” using Comparative Manifesto Project data from western European socialist parties between 1945 and 2021 and a novel matching technique for panel data. Miliband’s theory is strongly supported by this analysis, which also demonstrates the value of taking a multi-dimensional approach to deradicalization.