Counter-Revolution

Liberal Europe in Retreat

Jan Zielonka

A bold attempt to tackle the extraordinary problems facing present-day Europe
A provocative argument, accessibly presented in a series of heartfelt letters
Ranges across politics, economics, and culture
Unlike many other critiques, offers a way out of the current malaise

Counter-Revolution

Liberal Europe in Retreat

Jan Zielonka

Description

Can open society survive? Is Europe disintegrating? How to overcome the economic crisis? Will Europeans feel secure again?

Counter Revolution is a bold attempt to make sense of the extraordinary events taking place in Europe today. It examines the counter-revolution developing in Europe, exploring its roots and implications.

The book takes the form of a series of heartfelt letters to the late European guru Ralf Dahrendorf. Several months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dahrendorf wrote a book fashioned on Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. Like Burke, he chose to put his analysis in the form of a letter, reflecting on the implications of the turbulent period around 1989. Thirty years' later, and faced with an equally turbulent period, Jan Zielonka asks: what next?

This is not a book on populism, however: it is a book about liberalism. Populism has become a favourite topic within liberal circles and few have exposed populist deceptions and dangers better than liberal writers. Yet, liberals have shown themselves better at finger-pointing than at self-reflection. This book addresses the imbalance; it is a self-critical book by a life-time liberal.

Counter-Revolution suggests that Europe and its liberal project need to be reinvented and recreated. There is no simple way back. Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel will not produce wonders. Europe failed to adjust to enormous geopolitical, economic, and technological changes that swept the continent over the past three decades. European models of democracy, capitalism, and integration are not in sync with new complex networks of cities, bankers, terrorists, or migrants. Liberal values that made Europe thrive for many decades have been betrayed. The escalation of emotions, myths, and ordinary lies left little space for reason, deliberation, and conciliation. This book examines these different aspects, proposing a way out of the labyrinth.

Counter-Revolution

Liberal Europe in Retreat

Jan Zielonka

Counter-Revolution

Liberal Europe in Retreat

Jan Zielonka

Author Information

Jan Zielonka, Professor of European Politics at the University of Oxford and Ralf Dahrendorf Professorial Fellow at St Antony's College

Jan Zielonka is Professor of European Politics at the University of Oxford and Ralf Dahrendorf Professorial Fellow at St Antony's College. His previous appointments included posts at the University of Warsaw, Leiden and the European University Institute in Florence. He has produced seventeen books including Is the EU doomed? (Polity Press , 2014), Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union (OUP, 2006), and Media and Politics in New Democracies: Europe in a Comparative Perspective (OUP, 2015). He frequently contributes articles to various European newspapers.

Counter-Revolution

Liberal Europe in Retreat

Jan Zielonka

Reviews and Awards

"Jan Zielonka has provided us with an engaging and stimulating diagnosis of the pathologies of the European crisis of liberalism." - Ben Wellings, Australian Book Review

"Zielonka seeks not so much to defend the status quo based on the particular form of liberalism that has prevailed throughout the West in the past forty years, as to ask what went wrong with the wider liberal project. His critique of the complacency of Western and especially European elites is particularly powerful." - Hans Kundnani, The Times Literary Supplement

"I read Zielonka's earnest analysis of todays Europe this past weekend and recommend you read it too; the book of some 150 pages might replace that slightly stale flavor that Ivan Krasnev's "After Europe" left me with: Yes, something might have gone wrong, but where exactly, and what now?" - Florian Eder, Politico

"This is a bracing, if perhaps unduly pessimistic, self-criticism from a writer who remains a liberal and wants to retrieve its values. Applied to east and central Europe it highlights the weaknesses of their societies confronted with huge economic and political change." - Irish Times

"Zielonka's analysis is a curious mix, a liberal critique of populism and a populist critique of liberalism." - UCL European Institute

Counter-Revolution

Liberal Europe in Retreat

Jan Zielonka

From Our Blog

The counter-revolution in Europe

Several months after the fall of the Berlin Wall Ralf Dahrendorf wrote a book fashioned on Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France called Reflections on the Revolution in Europe. The intention was to explain the extraordinary events taking place in Europe around 1989.Today we are witnessing an equally turbulent period in Europe, however heading in the opposite direction.

Posted on February 24, 2018

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