Does the democratic nation state remain a legitimate regime form in the current age of globalization? Sceptical assessments of the nation state's legitimacy and outright crisis diagnoses prevail in the academic literature, especially in the contributions of public-opinion researchers. Democracy's Deep Roots uses a novel, analytical approach to probe this topical question. Drawing on a comparative study of legitimation discourses in the quality press of four Western democracies (Switzerland, Germany, Britain, and the United States), it shows that the levels and democratic foundations of public support for the nation state and its core institutions are surprisingly robust. There is little evidence for the fully-fledged erosion of legitimacy or for a transformation of its foundations in the public spheres of Western democracies. The book also identifies a number of discursive mechanisms that explain this finding and suggests an analytical framework for future research into the communicative dimension of legitimation processes.

ACHIM HURRELMANN is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. His research focuses on democracy and legitimacy in the European Union, multilevel governance, and European integration theory.

ZUZANA KRELL-LALUHOVÁ was a Research Associate at the TranState Research Centre, University of Bremen, Germany, and now works for the European Commission. In her academic research, she focuses on the legitimation of the nation state, with a special emphasis on the new EU member states.

FRANK NULLMEIER is Professor of Political Science at the Centre for Social Policy Research, University of Bremen, Germany. His areas of research include social policy analysis in a sociology-of-knowledge perspective and the micro-analysis of decision-making processes.

STEFFEN SCHNEIDER is a Research Associate at the TranState Research Centre, University of Bremen, Germany. His research focuses on the legitimacy of national and international political orders, on single-party dominance in Western democracies, and on labour market policy-making in advanced industrial economies.

ACHIM WIESNER was a Research Associate at the Centre for Social Policy Research and currently holds an administrative position at the University of Bremen, Germany. His research interests are in the areas of political ethnography, post-secondary education policy and federalism.