Newspaper obituaries of political figures are a distinctive, deeply British genre of political writing, yet one rarely examined. These obituaries trace the rise and fall of British newsprint around the turn of the millennium, a time when newspapers gained new freedoms in technology and politics, briefly flourishing before the internet signalled their decline. Traditionally, obituary writers were anonymous, though by the 1980s, an ‘obituarial turn’ reshaped the genre, widening its scope to include a broader range of lives and details. Obituaries began to embrace anecdotes, highlighting personal quirks and scandals, and thus reflected a broader shift in mores. A central paradox defines the genre: though obituaries appear authoritative in respected newspapers, they are subject to the editorial biases of the day. Shifts in editorship and political climates can reshape reputations, subtly influencing public memory. In the print era, obituaries seemed permanent, existing as clippings and archives. However, the digital age has transformed them: limitless online space has made their reach wider but less impactful. Today, obituaries serve not only as end-points but as starting points for biographical reflections on political lives.

The concluding chapter reflects upon how the themes and questions explored in the book speak to familiar concerns of families, communities, and societies across time. What is the purpose of education? What do we expect of our education, and in what ways does our pursuit of knowledge and our learning define who we are? The conclusion draws together the arguments from the preceding chapters, considering in what ways the ‘fall’ of Rome meant the end of the schools of grammar and rhetoric in Gaul. Without the superstructure of the Roman empire, the socio-political culture that valued literary education disappeared, and the schools soon followed suit; it was not primarily material changes caused by the political, cultural, and religious upheavals of the fifth century that led to the decline of the schools, but rather marked changes in the attitudes and mindset towards education and learning of the emerging power brokers of post-imperial Gaul – the barbarian kingdoms and the Church.

The second chapter of Invisible Fatherland examines how the Weimar National Assembly asserted and projected its political legitimacy while addressing broader struggles over gender, class, and heritage. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from key political speeches and figures to the spatial arrangements of furniture and decorative choices, the chapter outlines the republic’s emergent symbolic order and emotional tone. In this context, the mediated presence of female delegates in the national assembly revealed the challenge of creating a more inclusive political order in a society still deeply shaped by tradition. The assembly’s negotiation of competing visions of community reflects the difficulty of establishing an open and inclusive democratic order in the aftermath of war and defeat.

The sixth chapter of Invisible Fatherland builds on the analysis of Rathenau’s assassination by examining the wide range of eulogies and obituaries published in its aftermath. These texts served as memory sites, in Pierre Nora’s sense, where Rathenau’s life and death were appraised alongside broader questions about the state and nation. While the many expressions of solidarity revealed gaps and contradictions in the republican imaginary, they also demonstrate that Rathenau’s death gave new momentum to the republican cause. Four weeks after the murder, the federal parliament passed the “Law for the Protection of the Republic” with the required two-third majority. Shortly after, President Friedrich Ebert declared Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s Deutschlandlied the German national anthem, reclaiming a liberal democratic tradition that had been monopolized by German nationalists. The proclamation coincided with the republic’s Constitution Day on August 11, which is the focus of the following chapter.

The introduction of Invisible Fatherland lays the historiographical and conceptual groundwork for the book’s empirical chapters. The literature review traces the shift in Weimar studies from teleological narratives of inevitable collapse to a more balanced view of the first German democracy. Drawing on Jan-Werner Müller and Jürgen Habermas, the author clarifies the concept of constitutional patriotism by distinguishing it from civic and ethnic nationalism. She critiques the homogenizing tendencies of Weimar political thought, particularly Rudolf Smend’s influential theory of symbolic integration, for limiting our understanding of the republic’s original and innovative political culture. Finally, the introduction engages the work of scholars such as David Kertzer, Michael Walzer, and William Reddy to prepare for an empirical study of the republic’s symbolic style and emotional tone. Altogether, the introduction establishes an analytical framework for recovering Weimar’s constitutional patriotism and its relevance to contemporary debates on democratic resilience.

Preparing the ground for a broadly contextualize study of Weimar constitutional patriotism, the first chapter of Invisible Fatherland examines the symbolic forms and practices of the German Kaiserreich from its foundation in 1871 through World War I to the November Revolution of 1918. The analysis highlights the progressive nationalization of imperial symbols and their ability to resonate beyond social, political, and regional divides. The chapter concludes with a detailed examination of the return of German troops to Berlin at the end of the war. The official welcome parades in the German capital, marked by symbolic openness and ambiguity, reveal the tension between imperial continuity and revolutionary transformation. By focusing on the emerging republic’s shifting symbolic order during this liminal moment between war and peace, the chapter illuminates the persistence of imperial legacies alongside the possibilities for new, democratic forms of political belonging.

Religion is central to human experience. This chapter examines the influence of religion on the political culture from America’s founding to the present, provides a framework for classifying and measuring religion, and gives an overview of religious belief, belonging, and behavior.

The Introduction presents a historiographical discussion of the main topics analyzed throughout the book. It begins by offering a summary of the history of the city of Chuquisaca during the period under study (1777–1809). Then, it examines the crisis of the Spanish-American order in historical perspective. It is argued that, taken together, the study provides an alternative narrative to a growing historiographical consensus that American territories were kingdoms ‒ like the European ones ‒ rather than colonies; that “imperial collapse” (the French invasion of Spain), not “revolution”, was the starting point of independence; and that in their opposition to Bourbon absolutism, the creole elite looked backward, seeking to restore an ancient Hispanic monarchical order. It is my contention that absolutism and colonialism were indistinguishable, that the demise of Spanish rule in the Andes was rooted in a longstanding historical process, and that the traditional language of monarchical legitimism couched modern, utterly subversive, concepts of representative government, free speech, elections, public opinion, and sovereignty. In addition, the Introduction focuses on two large historical themes: the conformation of a culture of dissent and the place of Chuquisaca in the age of Andean insurrection in terms of issues of race, honor, and coloniality.

This chapter presents three different kinds of constitutional culture theories that deal with constitutional amendments, most of them being alternatives to the institutional accounts of this book. The first uses amendments as a random element (the constitutional text is in fact interpreted in more or less restrictive ways). The second uses previous amendment frequency as a proxy for constitutional culture and argues that the current amendment frequency depends on this culture and not on the amendment provisions. The third uses cultural indicators measured in each country as independent variables. I argue that each one of these theories lacks theoretical justification and that some of their arguments cannot survive statistical scrutiny, and I explain why they are insufficient in comparative terms.

Police killings of Black Americans are influenced not only by specific law enforcement situations but also by corruption – where corruption in a state is more extensive, police killings are more frequent. State-level factors may seem remote from local policing, but in fact the constitutional and political connections are strong and deep-rooted. Police killings of Black Americans also reflect contrasts in the states’ political cultures and aspects of communities’ racial composition. Median income levels and the economic gaps between Black and White populations also influence the patterns of police killings. Lobbying activities, political party competition, and police unionism contribute to overall levels of accountability. These diverse and often deep-rooted influences, many of them linked to the expectations communities have of their police and the attitudes of police toward their work and the surrounding communities, show that dealing with the problem of police killings of Black Americans will require fundamental changes of many sorts.

Observing that the history of the Roman Republic has been one of turbulence, conflict, and dynamic change throughout, Martin Jehne investigates the integrative and indeed moderating force of standardized forms of interaction between the upper and the lower classes. He sees the corresponding modes grounded in what Jehne labelled a Jovialitätsgebot, that is, a communicative and behavioural code of benevolence that structured and lent meaning to the mutual relations between unequals. Under this unspoken code, members of the governing classes were expected to encounter ordinary citizens deliberately and pointedly as if they were on terms of equality with one another, even though all parties understood that they were not. In its Roman context, Jovialität allowed both the nobility and the people to cultivate an institutionalized conversation that supplemented the realm of prevailing power structures and social asymmetries. To flesh out the argument, Jehne discusses a prominent incident from 414 BCE, the battle of words between M. Postumius Regillensis and M. Sextius.

The Roman Capitol was a place of memory. Several conceptual traits of a Roman lieu de mémoire are identified: an ever-present signposting to other stories, notions of humble origins, portents of a prosperous future, and great men who tie it all together. The concrete places related to these stories are not only visible but, in fact, vital to the story they tell; without them, the symbiotic interlinking between narrative and numinous place evaporates. Discussion of the Roman triumph demonstrates how space is created by ritual. From this emerged an implicit hierarchy of space that lent additional quality to place. The Republic’s greatest imperatores wished to see their fame immortalized on the Capitol. But the Capitol was also somewhat removed from everyday politics, for instance, in the Comitium or in the Forum. Here, aristocrats had to confront the people, directly and in person. In turn, the encounter was critical to the way in which the people awarded public offices in the voting assemblies on the Campus Martius. Between these various locations there developed a distinctive hierarchy of place that was defined by proximity to the present of politics, prestige, and war.

The contio was vital to the political conversation between the senate and people, creating a shared political space. Its success was not so much rooted in the institutional framework but in the contiones’ ability to connect with the audience’s lived experience. In particular, the nobility’s leadership was found acceptable because it was portrayed as beneficial to all; aristocrats were able to substantiate their claims for social eminence with real assets. The capacity to create consensus by means of a set decision-making process faded over time. The second half of the article traces the growing involvement of the contio with domestic issues since the time of the Gracchi, if not earlier. While promises of spoils and profit remained a recurring theme in public speech, they appeared less and less believable. The political crisis of the late Republic was thus also a crisis in the communication between mass and elite. The consensus evaporated because its inherent benefits had fallen flat: the contio became an outlet of discontent and communications counterintuitive to the preservation of the libera res publica.

Through the complex processes of generating mutual expectations and demands, senatorial consensus resulted in a wider consensus held by all. Only on four occasions did the popular assemblies ever vote in a way that went against the senate’s expectations, in 209, 200, 167, and 149 BCE. Discussion of each of these instances demonstrates that the people were not accustomed to, or interested in, following their own preferences: when rogationes were brought before the popular assemblies, they were certain to be agreed. What united the very few cases of rejection was that the people’s response was highly personalized, that is, the initial rogatio pertained to a specific individual; the response aimed at inconveniencing that person; and the senatorial elite was itself divided on the person. Egon Flaig performs a threefold analysis: he measures the strength of preferences in the peoples’ assemblies; he explores the limitations to what is labelled the institutional automatism behind the acceptance of motions; and he teases out the tactical and ritualized manoeuvres of withdrawing precarious proposals. The results are merged into a checklist that gauges the semantic and situational variety of action before the contio.