Political succession and regime change in new states in inter-war Europe: Ireland, Finland, Czechoslovakia and the Baltic Republics

Abstract. Problems of political succession are particularly acute when new regimes experience not merely the shock of the sudden introduction of democracy but also the challenge of consolidating a new territorial identity. The six North European states examined here, all of which became independent after the first world war, succeeded in establishing their legitimacy against threats from both left and right. The orderly political succession process was broken in three cases, however, by the appearance of authoritarian regimes in the inter-war period. The origins of this disjuncture are to be found not only in economic factors that enhanced the attractiveness of certain contemporary ideologies but also in the nature of elite political culture and the extent to which it had had the opportunity of absorbing liberal democratic norms.