Martin Conway is Professor of Contemporary European History at the University of Oxford, Fellow and Tutor at Balliol College, and Chair of the Board of the Faculty of History (2024–27). Renowned for his influential work on democracy in twentieth-century Europe, Conway is the author of Europe's Democratic Age: Western Europe 1945–68 and co-author of Social Justice in Twentieth Century Europe (2024) and is currently researching male citizenship in 20th century Europe and editing a new book series entitled "history of the present."

Opening with the question whether democracy breeds discontent, Professor Conway immediately answers "yes, of course it does." The difficult part to explain is why democracy produces a certain discontent that was not there before? We must note the difference between discontent with leaders and discontent with democracy itself. Conway illustrates that two assumptions have characterized the narrative and understanding of democracy, two assumptions in dire need of correcting. The first is that we understand democracy as a natural progression of (a certain set) of European countries. This assumption can be identified in explanations of exceptions to the modern rule of democracy, which are always attributed to the exceptionalism of said state, for example German Exceptionalism. The second is that democracy is seen as a self-correcting regime that improves over time and adjusts itself to the circumstance. An example of this, would be the inclusion of women and minorities into the framework of democracy. Together, these two assumptions – in which a hint of European/Western superiority can be detected – have shaped the idea of democracy as an irreversible process and a success story. The "BMW historians of the 20th century" as Conway describes them, drove around in a self-constructed era of optimism, they live in a particular past that has made them reluctant to embrace the gloomy unfamiliar present. The democracy success story no longer sells post 2020 and to accommodate for the European shift, a crisis narrative is adopted. The crisis narrative is not wrong in the ways that we see: 1. A decay of the formal practice of democracy – think of the decline in turnout, political participation and the transformation of parliament into empty chambers of back and forth, and "the wrong people winning", 2. A contested field of legality – a twin force of taking refuge in legalistic procedure over democratic process and the simultaneous erosion of the norms of legality, 3. A resurgence of executive power – or the government willingness to run ahead of the popular will, and 4. An ideological reconfiguration – where the left vs. right distinction has eroded and exclusionary national identity politics are heading towards semi-authoritarian models. This is all happening, however is this because democracy is in crisis? Or rather, is crisis an inevitable or inherent feature of democracy? Conway proposes "the 1848 thesis" to historically demonstrate that the assumptions of democracy as progressive and self-correcting may be false and that accepting the fragility of the established order, of democracy itself, is vital if we care about its future. We might need to get used to a more volatile form of democracy, "with more of the wrong people winning".

hosted by Professor Mark Gilbert


Martin Conway is Professor of Contemporary European History at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow and Tutor at Balliol College. He is also currently the Chair of the Board of the Faculty of History in Oxford (2024-7). His research has been principally concerned with European history from the 1930s to the final decades of the twentieth century. His doctoral thesis explored the history of the extreme-right movement in Belgium, the Rexist movement, during the Second World War. Published in 1993 as Collaboration in Belgium: Léon Degrelle and the Rexist Movement 1940-1944, it was subsequently published in French and Dutch translations. The Catholic origins of the Rexist movement led him on to develop a wider interest in Catholic politics, and he has published a number of books and articles which have looked more generally at the shape of Catholic politics in Europe. Conway has also continued his interest in Belgium, and wrote a large-scale study of Belgium after its liberation in 1944. This was published in 2012 as The Sorrows of Belgium: Liberation and Political Reconstruction 1944-47, and has subsequently also appeared in a French-language translation.

In the last few years much of his work has concerned the history of democracy in twentieth-century Europe. He has published a number of articles on the nature of democracy in post-war Europe, and a book entitled Europe's Democratic Age: Western Europe 1945-68, with Princeton University Press in the spring of 2020. An Italian translation, L'età della democrazia, was published by Carocci in 2023.

Conway recently completed a collaborative project with European colleagues on the history of social justice in twentieth-century Europe, which has been published by CUP as Social Justice in Twentieth-Century Europe Conway and Erlichman (eds.) (2024), as well as a forum in the Journal of Modern European History (2025).

He is currently engaged in two research projects. The first is a study of male citizenship in twentieth-century Europe, with the working title of Political Men. Its underlying thesis is that we need to understand how male forms of political action have been a significant influence on the evolution of both democratic and non-democratic regimes.

Secondly, Conway has been working and writing on the concept of the history of the present, as a distinct era separate from the more familiar span of the twentieth century. He is one of the editors (together with Celia Donert and Kiran Patel) of a new book series published by Cambridge University Press, entitled European Histories of the Present.