Dying Swans: The Role of Conservative Political Parties in Europe's Long-Run Democratization

Political parties that represent old regime interests are normally thought exclusively to play a "negative" role, blocking democracy and only conceding it when sufficiently challenged. This paper focuses on British and German democratization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to make the case that under certain conditions, old regime conservative parties play a decisive and counter-intuitive role that makes democratization more settled over the long run.