Bloomsbury Academic Embracing Democracy in Modern Germany: Political Citizenship and Participation, 1871-2000

Over the course of the modern era, the traditional stereotype of authoritarian Germans has given way as they have become (mostly) model democrats. This book examines 130 years of history to comprehensively address the central questions relating to this for the first time: How and why did this process occur? What has democracy meant to various Germans? And, finally, how stable is their, or indeed anyones, democracy? Looking at six German regimes across twelve decades, this study allows you to see how and why Germans have chosen to be politically active (even under dictatorships), the enormous range of conceptions of political culture and democracy they have held; and how the interactions between these factors produced instability and stability at different times. Michael L. Hughes also makes clear that recent surges of support for populism and authoritarianism have not come out of nowhere, but are inherent in long-standing contestations about democracy and political citizenship. Hughes argues that democracy in Germany or elsewhere is not a happy ending story of adversity overcome; it is an ongoing, open-ended process whose ultimate outcome remains uncertain. Review Embracing Democracy will reach far beyond those interested in Germany, especially at a moment when the paradoxes of actually-existing democracy are laid so bare across the world. Synthesizing the most compelling literatures across vastly different regimes, Hughes then offers a significant original account of the innumerable faces and protean character of democracy. An important read for specialists and broad audiences alike.Belinda Davis, Professor of History, Rutgers University, USA.This is a very timely book in the face of current challenges to liberal democracies in Germany as elsewhere. Michael L. Hughes gives us a fascinating depiction of competing concepts of democratic thought and government in the course of Germany's varied political history since the creation of the German Empire up to our time. By setting political ideas and practices in the cultural and social context of their time, this very readable book in fact provides one of the best concise surveys of Germany's history. Both experts and the public at large will find this book highly interesting and thought provoking.Martin H. Geyer, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany About the Author Michael L. Hughes is Professor of History at Wake Forest University, USA. He is the author of Shouldering the Burdens of Defeat: West Germany and the Reconstruction of Social Justice (1999) and Paying for the German Inflation (1988).