Parliamentary democracy

History

Democracy and parliamentarianism became increasingly prevalent in Europe in the years after World War I. This was partially imposed by the occupation and later the laws made by democratic victors—the U.S., Great Britain and France—on the defeated countries and their successors, notably Germany's Weimar Republic and the First Austrian Republic. Nineteenth-century urbanisation, the Industrial Revolution and modernism had already made the parliamentarist demands of the radicals and the emerging movement of social democrats increasingly difficult to ignore; these forces came to dominate many states that transitioned to parliamentarism, particularly in the French Third Republic where the Radical Party and its centre-left allies dominated the government for several decades. The rise of fascism in the 1930s put an end to parliamentary democracy in Italy and Germany, among others. After the World War II, the defeated Axis powers were occupied by the victorious Allies. In those countries occupied by the Allied democracies (the United States, United Kingdom, and France) parliamentary constitutions were implemented, resulting in the Constitutions of Italy, Germany, and Japan. The experiences of the war in the occupied nations where the legitimate democratic governments were allowed to return strengthened the public commitment to parliamentary principles; in Denmark, a new constitution was written in 1953, while a long and acrimonious debate in Norway resulted in no changes being made to the Constitution of Norway, a strongly entrenched democratic constitution.