Historians have long been aware of the power of narratives; but they have been hesitant to analyse the production of national narratives of democracy, in which their own profession played an important role. This issue and introduction aims to insert and study the role of narratives in the history of democracy. It builds on the growing literature in both the conceptual and political history of democracy, which has stressed the importance of the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century in the coming of modern democracy, albeit in non-linear and highly contested ways and often in contrast to the retrospective teleology at work in most older histories of democracy. Therefore, from the 19th century onwards, languages and narratives of democracy developed in many countries, but it happened at different times, at different speeds, and in different forms. This issue encourages and exemplifies systematic and comparative historical analysis of how narratives of democracy were created in that context: What national narratives of democracy did, in fact, exist in specific periods and contexts? Where have these narratives come from? How were nations ‘narrated’ as democratic, what purposes did different narratives serve, and how did they change over time?

中文翻译：

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民主的叙述：对历史研究的呼吁

历史学家早就意识到叙事的力量。但他们对分析民族民主叙事的产生犹豫不决，因为他们自己的职业在其中发挥了重要作用。本期和介绍旨在插入和研究叙事在民主历史中的作用。它建立在不断增长的民主概念史和政治史文献的基础上，这些文献强调了 19 世纪末和 20 世纪上半叶对现代民主的到来的重要性，尽管是以非线性和高度争议的方式并且通常与大多数较早的民主历史中起作用的回顾性目的论形成对比。因此，从 19 世纪开始，许多国家发展了民主的语言和叙事，但它发生的时间不同，速度不同，并以不同的形式。这个问题鼓励并举例说明了民主叙事如何在这种背景下产生的系统和比较历史分析：事实上，在特定时期和背景下存在哪些民族民​​主叙事？这些故事从何而来？国家如何被“叙述”为民主的，不同的叙述有什么目的，它们是如何随着时间变化的？