Transatlantic Democracy in the Twentieth Century

Transfer and Transformation

Paul Nolte

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2016
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110492798
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Transatlantic democracy in the 20th century - this concept goes beyond the idea of an American civilizing mission in Europe after two World Wars, and certainly beyond the notion of re-educating Germans, and making them fit for Western institutions after Nazism. As democracy is being contested anew in the beginning of the 21^st century, a much more complicated landscape of democracy since 1900 emerges. Transfer was not a one-way-street, and patterns of conflict and transformation affected both American and European political societies. American democracy may not be reduced to a resilient defense of original traditions, while the narrative of German democracy is more than redemption from catastrophe. The essays in this volume contribute to a new history of transatlantic democracy that accounts for its manifold experiences and constant renegotiations, up to the current challenges of American and European populism.

Table of contents

• Table of Content
• Danksagung
• List of Abbreviations
• Beyond Resilience, Beyond Redemption. Introducing a Complicated History of Transatlantic Democracy
• Political Democracy and the Shaping of Capitalism in pre-1914 America and Germany
• “Democracy”. A Political Concept as an Ideological Weapon in the U.S. before and during World War I
• Pluralizing Democracy in Weimar Germany. Historiographical Perspectives and Transatlantic Vistas
• How America Discovered Sweden. Reinventing Democracy during the 1930s
• Clumsy Democrats. Demons and Devils in Postwar Germany
• Discussing Democracy in Western Europe and the United States, 1945–1970
• Conflict as a Moment of Integration. The Role of Transatlantic Protest Movements since the 1960s
• Trajectories and Transformations of Western Democracies, 1950s–2000s
• Populism (against Democracy)
• List of Authors