'Democratization' is a concept often used in academic book titles, yet not many of them deal with the initial breakthrough of democratization. This research companion presents an alternative view to the widespread assumption that Western democracies should be the normative reference for the study of democratization elsewhere. Rather, it questions the universal validity of such an assumption by searching the history of European politics and by paying specific attention to the struggles of democratization accomplished outside Western Europe. The authors apply a comparative approach to analyzing debates in the primary sources in a number of countries and languages and situate the results into a broader European context. Focusing on European democratization from different historical and analytical perspectives, they discuss the politics, concepts and histories involved in democratization as a complex of changes that has altered the conditions of political action and debate in the continent for the past two centuries.

'Democratization' is a concept often used in academic book titles, yet not many of them deal with the initial breakthrough of democratization. This research companion applies a comparative approach to analyzing debates in a number of countries. It discusses the politics, concepts and histories involved in European democratization as a complex of changes that has altered the conditions of political action and debate in the continent for the past two centuries.

'Democratization' is a concept often used in academic book titles, yet not many of them deal with the initial breakthrough of democratization. This research companion applies a comparative approach to analyzing debates in a number of countries. It discusses the politics, concepts and histories involved in European democratization as a complex of changes that has altered the conditions of political action and debate in the continent for the past two centuries.

'Democratization' is a concept often used in academic book titles, yet not many of them deal with the initial breakthrough of democratization. This research companion applies a comparative approach to analyzing debates in a number of countries. It discusses the politics, concepts and histories involved in European democratization as a complex of changes that has altered the conditions of political action and debate in the continent for the past two centuries.

'Democratization' is a concept often used in academic book titles, yet not many of them deal with the initial breakthrough of democratization. This research companion presents an alternative view to the widespread assumption that Western democracies should be the normative reference for the study of democratization elsewhere. Rather, it questions the universal validity of such an assumption by searching the history of European politics and by paying specific attention to the struggles of democratization accomplished outside Western Europe. The authors apply a comparative approach to analyzing debates in the primary sources in a number of countries and languages and situate the results into a broader European context. Focusing on European democratization from different historical and analytical perspectives, they discuss the politics, concepts and histories involved in democratization as a complex of changes that has altered the conditions of political action and debate in the continent for the past two centuries.

The EU as a democratic polity has been invented: it is a product of creative and innovative actors and thinkers that conceptualized and by and by helped to realise it, from the beginning up to the present. But the concepts, ideas, and utopias of a democratic Europe differ considerably. The processes of inventing and building a democratic EU are marked by conceptual controversies in both public and academic debates. These are the resource for the present book, which focuses on the concepts, actors and controversies related to inventing the EU as a democratic polity. The chapters study exemplary long-term and detail cases related to inventing and institutionalizing the decisive elements of representative democracy in the EU—a parliament, citizens that vote for it in universal suffrage and governmental bodies that are linked to parliament in much the same way as government is in a parliamentary democracy.

As one of the most influential ideas in modern European history, democracy has fundamentally reshaped not only the landscape of governance, but also social and political thought throughout the world. Democracy in Modern Europe surveys the conceptual history of democracy in modern Europe, from the Industrial Revolutions of the nineteenth century through both world wars and the rise of welfare states to the present era of the European Union. Exploring individual countries as well as regional dynamics, this volume comprises a tightly organized, comprehensive, and thoroughly up-to-date exploration of a foundational issue in European political and intellectual history.