ABSTRACT
The main political theme of the interwar period is a remarkable regime instability. The roots of this instability go back to World War I and the communist revolution in Russia in 1917. The period first saw a massive wave of transitions to democracy, in both Europe and Latin America, followed by a large number of democratic breakdowns, some in the 1920s, others in the 1930s. Among these democratic breakdowns, we only find a few successful installations of totalitarian regimes, namely in the Soviet Union, Italy under Mussolini, and Germany under Hitler. But political elites in all other countries felt the pressure of these totalitarian successes. Across broad swathes of Europe and Latin America, the reaction came in the form of more traditional authoritarianism. Only the old and consolidated democracies of Northwestern Europe and the former British settler colonies were able to withstand this wave of authoritarianism.
