The Arts of Democratization

Amid recent concerns with the rise of would-be autocrats, this book reconsiders efforts in 1950s and 1960s West Germany to create a democracy and a democratic citizenry. The editors emphasize that democracy is inherently an ongoing project, one which is in practice contested and which may thus involve a multitude of democratic subjectivities. The essays explore how (West) Germans conceptualized and ‘stylized’ democracy. The book also builds on recent discussions of the ‘less-tangible emotional and affective dynamics of instilling democracy’ (p. 6). Implicitly, the kind of rationalistic civic education that has prevailed no longer seems adequate in the age of Orbán, Trump, et al. Kathleen Canning sets the stage by discussing the sharply contested foundation of Germany’s first democracy, the Weimar Republic. Germans openly disagreed and fought over whether they should have a councils democracy, or a parliamentary democracy, or a democracy capable of exercising authority (autoritäre Demokratie)—or any democracy at all. As the Federal Republic of Germany was being founded, such open disagreement did not really obtain. Communists and fascists were small and powerless minorities, and the still-predominant Allied occupation powers wanted some sort of parliamentary democracy. However, after the rise and rule of the Nazis, Germans still had to wonder what sorts of democratic subjectivities might be necessary—and obtainable—so that, unlike the Weimar Republic, their new parliamentary democracy was to survive.

Democracy · Democratization · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · The arts · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · European history and politics · Law