Thesis advisor: James Cronin / Thesis advisor: Devin O. Pendas / All efforts after the First World War to found — or reform — government on a democratic basis embraced the abstract concept that democratic legitimacy derived from the consent of the people. In this new age of national self-determination, however, the practical predicament became defining who constituted “the people” and how minorities would be managed. While historians have analyzed this issue in the “new” states of central and eastern Europe, this dissertation argues that it also plagued the supposedly more mature democracies of the Western European victors — Britain, France, and Italy. An analysis of the domestic population policies of those victors demonstrates that a new conception of democracy — based on both liberalism and nationalism — led them to pursue illiberal policies of population engineering with, paradoxically, the best of intentions: the preservation and stability of democracy itself. In an era in which people were becoming more involved in choosing their governments, governments were becoming more involved in choosing their people. While the victors sought to craft a more ethical — or at least more legalistic — form of population engineering than the often violent and ad hoc versions employed further east, the result nevertheless remained at odds with the ethical foundations of liberal democracy. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

The thesis deals with the formation of the European bar scene in the interwar period through the "new" phenomenon of entertainment, so called the American Bar which became the symbolic point of social gathering for elites. However, it was the fuel of social progress as an open forum for communication between genders as well. The main part focuses on a comprehensive analysis of the American Bar and its development as the phenomenon, based on the comparison of European cities, particularly London, Berlin and Prague. The main aim of the study was to analyze the phenomenon as the location of the post-war feelings and the option for the new wave of hedonism associated with rising living standards, while the cities were given into clash in their intensity manifestations of the phenomenon. The thesis outlines the overall atmosphere of the bar from many different perspectives, above all, through the forms of bar promotion, the activities of associations, legislative responses, the normal operation of the bar, the professional part of the bar and the everyday socio-cultural impact on the lives of consumers, but also by reflecting on the bar culture in art.

The thesis deals with the formation of the European bar scene in the interwar period through the new phenomenon of entertainment, so called the American Bar which became the symbolic point of social gathering for elites. However, it was the fuel of social progress as an open forum for communication between genders as well. The main part focuses on a comprehensive analysis of the American Bar and its development as the phenomenon, based on the comparison of European cities, particularly London, Berlin and Prague. The main aim of the study was to analyze the phenomenon as the location of the post-war feelings and the option for the new wave of hedonism associated with rising living standards, while the cities were given into clash in their intensity manifestations of the phenomenon. The thesis outlines the overall atmosphere of the bar from many different perspectives, above all, through the forms of bar promotion, the activities of associations, legislative responses, the normal operation of the bar, the professional part of the bar and the everyday socio-cultural impact on the lives of consumers, but also by reflecting on the bar culture in art.

The focus of this thesis is on the process of myth-making (mythopoeia) in the Dutch National Socialist Movement (NSB) and the Swedish National Socialist Workers' Party (NSAP), using a cultural pragmatic approach to analyse the practicalities and implementation of mythopoeia comparatively. A variety of fascist performances, scripted and unscripted, are considered as having mythopoeic potential, and understood as performative in character, i.e. constituting the thing they claimed to represent. Multiple parts of this mythopoeic process are analysed: the resources, organisation, and technologies required to implement it, and the nature of the process, the events, performances, in other words the actual implementation, and reception by audiences. Secondly, it uses respectability as a means of seeing how in a national context this process was limited, inhibited, or otherwise defined by the standards of the public and media, to which fascists ultimately tried to appeal, thus providing an external perspective on fascist activities to contextualise them. The thesis is divided into four chapters, which deal with the party apparatus, leader myth, political uniforms, and the role of aesthetics and spectacle respectively. Together these chapters explore the relationship between mythopoeia and respectability as refracted through party organisation and administration, as embodied by the 'charismatic' fascist Leader, in the day-to-day behaviour and appearance of the rank-and-file, and ultimately the holistic experience of fascist aesthetics, i.e. the fully scripted and organised spectacles of party congresses. Ultimately it is shown that the fascist movements of Sweden and the Netherlands were highly innovative organisations. Mythopoeia had a powerful mobilising capacity, which could make up for the diminutive financial power and low membership figures of fascist parties. Finally it appears that the relationship between myth and respectability was not a straightforward dialectical one, but multivalent, and highly dynamic.