Building on a workshop organized by my colleague Adriejan van Veen and me in 2022, we have been working on an edited volume titled “Depoliticisation before Neoliberalism. Contesting the Boundaries of the Political in Modern Europe”. We were able to bring together a range of scholars from diverse national backgrounds and with different areas of expertise to study the phenomenon of depoliticisation in a long-term and european-wide perspective.
We are very happy that the volume has now been announced as part of the series Palgrave Studies in Political History.
The book’s announcement reads as follows:
This book analyses processes of depoliticisation in modern Europe from the emergence of a distinct ‘political’ sphere in the late eighteenth century until the present day. Drawing on case studies from across the continent, it demonstrates that depoliticisation has played an integral part in the contestation of modern politics since its inception. Developing a novel conceptual framework, the authors argue that depoliticisation is much more than a simple negation of politics. Rather than an anonymous and amorphous process, depoliticisation often presents an express, actor-driven effort, with modes and forms no less varied than the more familiar manifestations of politicisation. Consequently, the chapters encompass a whole range of depoliticising discursive strategies, performative practices, and institutional rearrangements, playing out across different regime types, from revolutionary orders and representative governments with limited franchises to mass democracies and totalitarian dictatorships. Illustrating how historical actors understood ‘the political’ and in which ways they intervened to renegotiate its boundaries, this book seeks to enhance our understanding of modern politics and pose questions that still resonate today. At a time when the boundaries of the political are once more heavily contested, this book offers thought-provoking insights that will appeal to scholars of history, political science, and sociology, as well as to activists and political practitioners.
Behind the scenes, my co-editor and I are still busy working out the last stages of the publishing process and it will probably still take some time until we hold the actual book in our hands, but we are very content that we are now seeing some first ‘signs of life’ and want to express our heartfelt gratitude to our contributors.
Table of contents
- Adriejan van Veen and Theo Jung: Depoliticisation in Modern European Politics: An Introduction
- Ido de Haan: Historicising Depoliticisation: Dimensions of the Political and Its Alternatives
Part I: Discursive Depoliticisation: Ideas, Concepts, and Rhetoric - Matthijs Lok: Depoliticisation after Revolution: Moderation, Science and the State in the Nineteenth Century
- Tamar Kojman: Between Religion and Politics: Constructing an Apolitical Sphere after the 1848–1849 German Revolutions
- Ruben Ros: Depoliticising Democracy: Technocratic Antipolitics in Dutch Interwar Political Culture (1917–1939)
- Stefan Scholl: Depoliticising the Economy? Semantic Struggles about ‘Politics’ and ‘the Economy’ during the Weimar Republic and National Socialism
Part II: Doing Depoliticisation: Practices and Performances - Adriejan van Veen: “The Silent Citizen Became a Hero!” State, Civil Society, and the Depoliticisation of Dutch Society in the Restoration Era
- Oriol Luján: Not Only Apathy and Disinterest: Abstention and the Blank Vote as Modes of Repoliticisation in Nineteenth-Century Europe
- Eva Visser: Planning the Technate: The Apolitical Politics of the 1930s’ Technocratic Movement in the United States and Europe
- Zoé Kergomard: Depoliticisation in Danger of Repoliticisation? The Ambiguities of Gaullist Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns in the Early French Fifth Republic (1958–1969)
- Adéla Gjuričová: Antipolitics as a Political Tool of Czech Dissent: From Earlier Roots to Its Second Life after 1989
Part III: Institutional Depoliticisation: Delegation and Neutralisation - Mart Rutjes: Access Denied: The Institutional Depoliticisation of Representative Government during the Dutch Revolution, 1780–1801
- Jan-Markus Vömel: (Un)Political Islam? Contesting the Turkish State’s Depoliticisation of Islam
- Wim de Jong: The Police and the Political: The Problem of Depoliticisation in Dutch Municipal Policing, 1945–2002
- Anna Catharina Hofmann: An Administered Society? Economic Planning and (De)Politicisation in the Late Franco Dictatorship
- Koen van Zon: Eliminating Pests, Eliminating Politics? The European Community’s Regulation of Pesticides, 1958–1991
Theo Jung 