Sheri Berman
Associate Professor of Political Science
Barnard College, Columbia University
sberman@barnard.edu
I am an associate
professor of Political Science
at Barnard College,
Columbia University in New York City.
My research interests include political development, European politics,
comparative political economy and the history of the left.
My first book, The
Social Democratic Moment,
explains why the Swedish and German social democratic parties made such
different choices during the interwar era. My focus is on their differing
ideas about politics and economics (their "programmatic beliefs"). I argue
that largely as a result of these ideas the Swedish Social Democrats placed
themselves at the forefront of the drive for democratization; a decade later
they responded to the Depression with a bold new economic program and used
it to build a long period of political hegemony. The German Social Democrats,
on the other hand, had democracy thrust upon them and then dithered when
faced with economic crisis; their haplessness cleared the way for a bolder
and more skillful political leader-- Adolf Hitler.
My second book,
The Primacy of Politics. Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's
Twentieth Century,
examines the history of social democracy from its origins in the late
nineteenth century to today and shows how it beat out competitors such as
classical liberalism, orthodox Marxism, and its cousins, fascism and
National Socialism, by solving the central challenge of modern politics:
reconciling the competing needs of capitalism and democracy.

I have also written articles and essays on a variety of other topics. If you are interested, please go to my publications page or view my cv.
Teaching: My courses include graduate seminars on political development and European political development; undergraduate courses on "Making Democracy Work"; Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe; and a senior seminar for students writing theses in comparative politics.