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Why did Hungary, a country that shared much of the religious and institutional heritage of western Europe, fail to replicate the social and political experiences of the latter in the nineteenth and early twenties centuries? The answer, the author argues, lies not with cultural idiosyncracies or historical accident, but with the internal dynamics of the modern world system that stimulated aspirations not easily realizable within the confines of backward economics in peripheral national states. The author develops his theme by examining a century of Hungarian economic, social, and political history. During the period under consideration, the country witnessed attempts to transplant liberal institutions from the West, the corruption of these institutions into a \"neo-corporatist\" bureaucratic state, and finally, the rise of diverse Left and Right radical movements as much in protest against this institutional corruption as against the prevailing global division of labor and economic inequality. Pointing to significant analogies between the Hungarian past and the plight of the countries of the Third World today, this work should be of interest not only to the specialist on East European politics, but also to students of development, dependency, and center-periphery relations in the contemporary world.

The triumphant rise of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte over his Republican opponents has been the central theme of most narrative accounts of mid-nineteenth-century France, while resistance to the coup d'état generally has been neglected. By placing the insurrection of December 1851 in a broad perspective of socioeconomic and political development, Ted Margadant displays its full significance as a turning point in modern French history. He argues that, as the first expression of a new form of political participation on the part of the peasants, resistance to the coup was of greater importance than previously supposed. Furthermore, it provides and appropriate testing ground for more general theories of peasant movements and popular revolts. Using manuscript materials in French national and departmental archives that cover all the major areas of revolt, the author examines the insurrection in depth on a national scale. After a brief discussion of the main characteristics of the insurrection, he analyzes its economic and social foundations; the dialectic of repression and conspiracy that fostered the political crisis; and the armed mobilizations, violence, and massive arrests that exploded as the result. A final chapter considers the implications of the insurrection for larger issues in the social and political history of modern France.

Many American readers like to regard Alexis de Tocqueville as an honorary American and democrat--as the young French aristocrat who came to early America and, enthralled by what he saw, proceeded to write an American book explaining democratic America to itself. Yet, as Lucien Jaume argues in this acclaimed intellectual biography,Democracy in Americais best understood as a French book, written primarily for the French, and overwhelmingly concerned with France. \"America,\" Jaume says, \"was merely a pretext for studying modern society and the woes of France.\" For Tocqueville, in short, America was a mirror for France, a way for Tocqueville to write indirectly about his own society, to engage French thinkers and debates, and to come to terms with France's aristocratic legacy. By taking seriously the idea that Tocqueville's French context is essential for understandingDemocracy in America, Jaume provides a powerful and surprising new interpretation of Tocqueville's book as well as a fresh intellectual and psychological portrait of the author. Situating Tocqueville in the context of the crisis of authority in postrevolutionary France, Jaume shows that Tocqueville was an ambivalent promoter of democracy, a man who tried to reconcile himself to the coming wave, but who was also nostalgic for the aristocratic world in which he was rooted--and who believed that it would be necessary to preserve aristocratic values in order to protect liberty under democracy. Indeed, Jaume argues that one of Tocqueville's most important and original ideas was to recognize that democracy posed the threat of a new and hidden form of despotism.