Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

The western European state, as it emerged in those years, was increasingly detached from any doctrinal project; and, as we have seen, the rise of the welfare state had defused the old political animosities. More people than ever before had a direct interest in the policies and expenditures of the state, but they no longer came to blows over who should control it. Western Europeans seemed to have arrived rather sooner than anticipated at the ‘broad, sunlit uplands’ (Churchill) of prosperity and peace: where politics was giving way to government, and government was increasingly confined to administration. However: the predictable consequence of the nanny state, even the post-ideological nanny state, was that for anyone who had grown up knowing nothing different it was the duty of the state to make good on its promise of an ever better society—and thus the fault of the state when things did not turn out well. The apparent routinization of public affairs in the hands of a benevolent caste of overseers was no guarantee of public apathy. In this respect, at least, Aron’s prognosis was off target. Thus it was that the very generation which came of age in the Social Democratic paradise of its parents’ longings was most irritated and resentful at its shortcomings.