Nachdenken über Demokratie

The political scientist and historian Peter Graf Kielmannsegg has dedicated his academic career to analysing the liberal constitutional state, its roots and the manifold challenges it poses. By examining his writings in both a biographical and contemporary context, this study is the first to address an exceptional representative of the third generation of political scientists. Based on the question ‘What is his academic work rooted in and what reception has it received?’, this biography of Kielmannsegg’s work from the beginning of his career in the 1960s to the present provides an overview of the subject areas it covers, including its trends and changes of direction, and of his understanding of an appropriate form of political science. Kielmannsegg’s advocatory thinking revolves around a representative form of democracy and its fascinating idproduct and stability. Basing his approach on the history of ideas and aligning it with democratic theory, he addresses current debates and, as the ‘thinking teacher of democracy’, explains complex interrelationships.