The Regime Question: Foundations of Democratic Governance in Europe and the United States

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Amel Ahmed

The Regime Question

Foundations of Democratic Governance in Europe and the United States

Amel Ahmed

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English

Princeton University Press
08 July 2025

Comparative politics; Political structures: democracy; Geopolitics

Ongoing struggles over core principles of democratic governance

The regime question-often boiled down to ""democracy or autocracy?""-has been central to democratic politics from the start. This has entailed not only fights over the extent of the franchise but also, crucially, ongoing struggles over core principles of democracy, the ""rules of the game."" In this timely study, Amel Ahmed examines the origins and development of the regime question in Western democracies and considers the implications for regime contention today. She argues that battles over the regime question were so foundational and so enduring that they constitute a dimension of politics that polarized political opponents across the regime divide.

Ahmed investigates four historical cases in the study of democratic development: the United Kingdom between the Reform Act of 1832 and World War II (18321939), Imperial and Weimarera Germany (18761933), the French Third Republic (18701939), and the United States before World War II (17891939). Focusing on legislative politics as an essential site of democratic governance and key to understanding long-term democratic endurance, she shows that when the regime question became salient, it hindered the formation of viable legislative coalitions along the left-right policy spectrum. This failure opened the door to executive encroachment, destabilizing the regime. Ahmed shows that the resurgence of the regime question today is not, as is often assumed, a break with prior trajectories of political development but a new instantiation of battles fought in previous eras.

By: Amel Ahmed
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9780691269436
ISBN 10: 0691269432
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 08 July 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Amel Ahmed is associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of Democracy and the Politics of Electoral System Choice: Engineering Electoral Dominance.