Reflections on the Revolution in Europe

Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, which includes a new introduction from the author, is a humane, skeptical, and anti-utopian work, a manifesto for a radical liberalism in which the social entitlements of citizenship are as important a condition of progress as the opportunities for choice. Dahrendorf ponders vexing questions, arising after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 which effectively ended the division of Europe into East and West. He regards what has happened in East Central Europe as a victory for neither of the social systems that once opposed each other across the Iron Curtain. Rather, he views these events as a vote for an open society over a closed society. The continuing conundrum, he argues, which will plague peoples everywhere, will be how to balance the need for economic growth with the desire for social justice, while building authentic and enduring democratic institutions.

Ralf Dahrendorf was professor of sociology at Hamburg, Tubingen, and Konstanz from 1957 to 1968, and in 1974 moved to Britain. He has been the director of the London School of Economics, warden of St. Antony's College, and pro vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford.