Shows how the sudden opportunity to "practice" democracy in 1867 opened up a free space in the land of Kaisers, generals, and Junkers. This book offers a reinterpretation of 19th- and early 20th-century Germany and engages historians concerned with the question of Germany's "special path" to modernity.

"An exciting and valuable addition to the historiography of modern Germany."--Choice "Margaret Lavinia Anderson's study of electoral practices in imperial Germany provides the most compelling assault to date on the idea that the German political system encouraged authoritarian attitudes, values, and political practices... This is a powerful, challenging piece of scholarship...[It] mobilizes a breathtaking arsenal of sources and a radiating presentation makes it as readable as it is enlightening... This book is, in all events, a major achievement."--Roger Chickering, American Historical Review "One has to be somewhat in awe of Professor Anderson's wide reading, trenchant prose, keen eye, and nose for a good argument. This book is exemplary for how history ought to be written. The author is in command of a vast body of material, presented economically with a sensitivity to significant detail, and it is marshalled behind original, clearly conceived arguments that frequently defy conventional assumptions. The result is not only the best book yet written on German Reichstag elections and political culture before 1918. It is also a key work on the history of modern Europe, and on electoral democracy in the industrial era."--Brett Fairbarin, German History "Although the Weimar Republic may have been the first German democratic state, it was not, Margaret Lavinia Anderson shows in Practicing Democracy, Germany's first experience of democracy. Anderson argues that the interplay among the popular experience, institutional structure, and the political practice of universal male suffrage in Reichstag elections paradoxically produced a political culture of democracy in the nondemocratic imperial German state. Anderson's explanation of [this] paradox has important implications not only for German history, but also for recent political science literature on the transition to democracy. [Anderson's book] is theoretically startling, persuasively argued, richly detailed, and a pleasure to read."--Andrew Zimmerman, German Studies Review

The very best, most detailed and most comprehensible picture of political life in Imperial Germany available in any language. It marks a new stage in the development of our knowledge about the practice and culture of popular politics in the nineteenth century--not just in Germany, but in the entire European and North American world. -- Jonathan Sperber, University of Missouri