| At the beginning of the 20th century in Europe, comprehensive ideological positions defining the basic nature of society tended to be politically marginal. The nationalist unifications of Italy and Germany had avoided becoming ideologically liberal, and Great Britain and France maintained a practical adherence to parliamentary liberalism. Democratic liberalism, in an explicitly capitalist format, as it was emerging in the U.S., was also pragmatic in orientation. World War I destroyed the stability of the politically evolutionary acceptance of change, and following the war, the alternatives were more sharply defined in ideologically programmatic terms. | 2 |
| The victorious powers in World War I were committed to differing forms of democratic liberalism. The World War I settlement reflected this ideological position. The global terms were set by the U.S. president WOODROW WILSON, in an ideological liberal internationalism committed to the self-determination of peoples, democratic political systems, relatively capitalist market economies, and peaceful resolution of international conflicts by public negotiation. The League of Nations was the manifestation of this ideology. Although Great Britain and France were less committed to the international aspects, they maintained their own democratic parliamentary systems and supported efforts to create and maintain them elsewhere in Europe. Germany was reconstituted in the Weimar Republic, and in the other new states established in Central and Eastern Europe, parliamentary systems were established. Significant economic difficulties in all of the democracies and growing political divisions among the parties led to increasing pressures for more authoritarian leaders, and in a number of countries dictators came to power. In the continuing democracies, the Depression forced major changes involving significant government intervention in the economy. Democratic socialism became a major force in Britain and France, and the New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt, beginning in 1933 in the U.S., was a major transformation of the economy of the U.S. The economies of the liberal democracies were increasingly mixed economies, combining aspects of capitalism and socialism in an emerging democratic welfare state system. During World War II, the Axis powers represented the authoritarian alternative to liberal democracy. When they were defeated, the Allied powers established constitutional democratic systems in Italy, Japan, and the parts of Germany under occupation by American, British, and French forces. In the Western world, after major setbacks during the interwar period, liberal democracy, in modified capitalist and socialist economic systems, emerged after World War II as the dominant sociopolitical ideology. | 3 |
