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The Great Collapse, Democratic Paralysis and the Reception of the Bomb
Author(s) -
UNGAR SHELDON
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
journal of historical sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.186
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-6443
pISSN - 0952-1909
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6443.1992.tb00024.x
Subject(s) - democracy , nuclear weapon , faith , political science , political economy , development economics , history , law and economics , law , sociology , economics , politics , epistemology , philosophy
Expanding the traditional question of how and why the bomb was built when it was, this paper asks how socio‐historical factors influenced the reception of the bomb in the West. It suggests that the bomb was received as the ‘winning weapon’ and that this view of it was linked to two historical factors: the Great Collapse, which undermined belief in historical progress and threatened the survival of the democracies; and the failure of balancing, the inability of the democracies, for a number of sociopolitical reasons, to act in their own collective security. As the winning weapon, the bomb was expected to overcome these problems. More broadly, the analysis suggests that when collective actions do not appear capable of redressing persistent threats, then leaders tend to invest their faith in technological panaceas.