Moderation through expertise: Functional elites and the politics of moderation in western Europe’s mid-twentieth century

Camilo erlichman explores the rise of experts in politics during the ‘long 1940s’ in western europe and its relation to the emergence of a politics of moderation in the immediate post-war era. He demonstrates how the collapse of effective central state authority and the breakdown of mass parliamentary politics allowed for the emergence of a range of influential expert groups operating beneath the level of the formal political process, creating a top-down reconfiguration of politics structured around experts who advanced discourses and practices of political moderation that were integral to the post-war model of democracy.