A History of Democracy beyond National Narratives

It is often stressed that representation is the fundamental common characteristic of modern democracies. However, modern democracy is also marked by another striking characteristic: its close relationship to the modern nation state and itsmythologies. This connection has had very deep, and to some extent unrecognized, implications for historians' understanding of democracy and its evolution in various contexts. This essay shows how the connection has played out in the Danish case. It concludes by arguing that conceptual history offers a perspective that can go beyond national narratives, while still being able to recognize national differences and peculiarities and relate them to transnational and epochal patterns.