1922: The Birth of Irish Democracy

Garvin (politics, U. College, Dublin) examines the birth of the Irish state in the context of European history and the vicious civil war that was raging between internal factions at the time. Arguing that the conflict was over whether the Irish should be ruled by a popular majority or a virtuous but unaccountable minority, he says radical Republicanism was never widely popular and that the Irish succeeded in instituting a moderate and realistic regime under mainstream nationalists. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Tom Garvin

PALGRAVE~MACMILLAN

The process of democratic nation-making reached full fruition while a vicious civil war was raging, ostensibly fought over points of political principle but actually deciding whether Ireland was to be ruled by popular majority will or by a virtuous but unaccountable minority. Gavin argues that militant republicanism always lacked popular, democratic legitimacy and that mainstream Irish nationalism was moderate and realistic. It was this nation-building tradition that triumphed in 1922. Thus, Ireland did not go the way of so many newly emerging European states. There evolved a stable democracy which eventually came to include most of those defeated in 1922.

1922: Birth of Irish Democracy

History

Europe

Gill Macmillan Ltd

The 1950s was a decade of international economic recovery after the disasters of World War II. There was just one exception. The Irish economy actually contracted in those years, and over four hundred thousand people emigrated. Tom Garvin's survey of the 1950s is an interpretative narrative, based largely on a close reading of contemporary newspaper reports and analyses. He identifies the primary causes of the calamity as a revolutionary gerontocracy that overstayed its welcome; the blocking power of powerful special interest groups who alone benefited from economic protection; and an ideology of rural frugality, buttressed by an under-developed educational system and supported by the moral monopoly of the Catholic Church. Garvin also traces the rise of the generation that broke this consensus and carried Ireland into the free-trade boom of the 1960s. Their reform prescription was born not just of despair but also of a series of social changes among the Irish middle-class elite that were to prove decisive over time.

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Books by Tom Garvin

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1922: The Birth of Irish Democracy

1922: Birth of Irish Democracy

1922: The Birth of Irish Democracy

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