What happens when manhood suffrage, a radically egalitarian
institution, gets introduced into a deeply hierarchical society? In
her sweeping history of Imperial Germany's electoral culture,
Anderson shows how the sudden opportunity to "practice" democracy
in 1867 opened up a free space in the land of Kaisers, generals,
and Junkers. Originally designed to make voters susceptible to
manipulation by the authorities, the suffrage's unintended
consequence was to enmesh its participants in ever more democratic
procedures and practices. The result was the growth of an
increasingly democratic culture in the decades before 1914.
Explicit comparisons with Britain, France, and America give us a
vivid picture of the coercive pressures--from employers, clergy,
and communities--that German voters faced, but also of the
legalistic culture that shielded them from the fraud, bribery, and
violence so characteristic of other early "franchise regimes." We
emerge with a new sense that Germans were in no way less modern in
the practice of democratic politics. Anderson, in fact, argues
convincingly against the widely accepted notion that it was pre-war
Germany's lack of democratic values and experience that ultimately
led to Weimar's failure and the Third Reich.
"Practicing Democracy" is a surprising reinterpretation of
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany and will engage
historians concerned with the question of Germany's "special path"
to modernity; sociologists interested in obedience, popular
mobilization, and civil society; political scientists debating the
relative role of institutions versus culture in the transition to
democracy. By showing how political activity shaped and was shaped
by the experiences of ordinary men and women, it conveys the
excitement of democratic politics.
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