Narratives of Democratization: 1968 in Postwar Europe

Abstract

In retrospect, 1968, the year of global revolt halfway between the end of World War II and the end of the Cold War, looked like a failed revolution. None of the protests that erupted from Berkeley to Berlin, from Bangkok to Buenos Aires, and from Prague to Tokyo led to the overthrow of existing orders. While the protagonists struggled in the belief of a common cause, opposing the domestic and international status quo in the name of participatory democracy, political freedom, and personal self determination,1 they also found themselves united in their failure to gain what they aspired to. Like its more famous European precursor, the 1848–1849 bourgeois revolutions, the 1968–1969 uprisings seemed to have been doomed from the beginning; likewise, they ended in crushing defeat.2 Democracy may have been in the streets in the late 1960s, but it did not make it to halls of power.