Between Democracy and Totalitarianism: Raymond Aron’s Political Sociology of twentieth-century Industrial Societies

This book provides a thorough interpretation of Raymond Aron’s political sociology of industrial societies from the perspective of contemporary political science. However, the book is not only aimed at specialists or advanced students of political science, but appeals to a much wider range of cultivated readers. Particular attention is paid to those issues that have been subject to conflicting interpretations, such as his relationship to the so-called convergence theory, or how he understood the end of the ideological age, what his relationship to European integration was, or to what extent he was influenced by Carl Schmitt. More than 40 years have passed since Aron’s death (1983). The author therefore explains the extent to which more recent scholars such as Giovanni Sartori, François Furet, Leszek Kołakowski, Martin Malia and Alain Besançon have contributed to or continued to analyse the issues that Raymond Aron was so concerned with.