Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy

Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy is a 2017 non-fiction book by Daniel Ziblatt, published by Cambridge University Press, discussing the growth of democratic countries in 19th and 20th century Europe. Ziblatt's thesis is that in those democracies the conservative parties were often crucial on whether a democracy survives: he analysed both Germany and the United Kingdom. Ziblatt argued that if conservative parties were robust they would assist democracy but if they had weaknesses they would impede democracy.

John Markoff, in the American Journal of Sociology, wrote that "Ziblatt shines his spotlight on how those who had held economic and political power in the past attempted to keep on doing so and on how they innovated in order to keep essential things unchanged." Markoff states that, according to the book, "an antidemocratic right" is the faction that "prevails in democracy's crises" and that according to the book "democracy's stability depends on keeping "the propertied and powerful" (p. 368) content." Seva Gunitsky, in Perspectives on Politics, wrote that, as per the book, established conservative parties are crucial elements in changes in politics that lack violence and that such parties perceive democracy "as a gamble—a risky one, to be sure, but one on which they could place their own bets, and even win."