How does a country reconstitute itself as a functioning democracy after a period of dictatorship? The new community may execute, imprison, or temporarily disenfranchise some citizens, but it will be unable to exclude all who supported the fallen regime. Political reconciliation must lay the groundwork for political trust. Democracy offers the compromised--and many who were more than just compromised--a second chance.

In this new book, Anne Sa'adah explores twentieth-century Germany's second chances. Drawing on evidence from intellectual debates, trials, literary works, controversies about the actions of public figures, and partisan competition, Sa'adah analyzes German responses to the problem of reconciliation after 1945 and again after 1989. She depicts the frustrations, moral and political ambiguities, and disappointments inherent to even successful processes of democratization. She constantly underscores the difficult trade-off between achieving a modicum of justice and securing the legitimacy and stability of the new regime. A strategy of reconciliation emphasizing outward conformity to democratic norms and behavior, she argues, has a greater chance of sustaining a new and fragile democracy than do more direct attempts to punish past misdeeds and alter people's inner convictions.

Few would disagree that Western democracies are experiencing a crisis of representation. In the United States, gerrymandering and concentrated political geographies have placed the Congress and state legislatures in a stranglehold that is often at odds with public opinion. Campaign financing ensures that only the affluent have voice in legislation. Europeans, meanwhile, increasingly see the European Union as an anti-democratic body whose “diktats” have no basis in popular rule. The response, however, has not been an effective pursuit of better representation. In Good Government, Pierre Rosanvallon examines the long history of the alternative to which the public has gravitated: the empowered executive.

Rosanvallon argues that, faced with everyday ineptitude in governance, people become attracted to strong leaders and bold executive action. If these fail, they too often want even stronger personal leadership. Whereas nineteenth-century liberals and reformers longed for parliamentary sovereignty, nowadays few contest the “imperial presidency.” Rosanvallon traces this history from the Weimar Republic to Charles De Gaulle’s “exceptional” presidency to the Bush-Cheney concentration of executive power.

Europeans rebelling against the technocratic EU and Americans fed up with the “administrative state” have turned to charismatic figures, from Donald Trump to Viktor Orbán, who tout personal strength as their greatest asset. This is not just a right-wing phenomenon, though, as liberal contentment with Obama’s drone war demonstrates. Rosanvallon makes clear that contemporary “presidentialism” may reflect the particular concerns of the moment, but its many precursors demonstrate that democracy has always struggled with tension between popular government and concentrated authority.

In Greek Media Discourse, Nikoletta Tsitsanoudis-Mallidis examines the changes in the form and symbolism of the language utilized by the media in Greece since the fall of the dictatorship in 1974, revealing linguistic reflections of important economic and political changes of the country. She argues that the language took a more grassroots approach because it served the climate of the restoration of democracy. It took on progressive implications by distancing from more formal approaches, facilitating political alliances and raising popular expectations.

Greek language took a more populist turn when private media sought opportunities within the lower and lower-middle classes. Language both influenced, and was influenced by, an embrace of politics through the “authority” it had gained via television and publishing. It also lost and regained the role of representing the campaigns of the common people. In the era of memoranda it became a sharp tool of manipulation, aiming at the coercive acceptance of harsh economic measures.

Finally, Tsitsanoudis-Mallidis demonstrates the way language provokes critical debate, with questions about how ultimately democratic are the forces that shape a discourse with such a “biased” projection as journalism, leaving unanswered the final question: How pedagogical can a public discourse be when it loses its democracy as a social good?