The problems that democratic systems had during the 1920s and 1930s were not limited to the Weimar Republic but were common throughout Europe. They did, however, have particularly dire consequences in Germany. This research project initiated and headed by Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Horst Möller, which was completed in summer 2011, focused on topics central to the Weimar Republic and the Third French Republic.

The project combines several large studies, all connected by a search for the factors that contributed to the stability or instability of the two democracies. The comparative analysis aimed both at finding analogues as well as characteristic differences. A spectrum was depicted from the height of extremism in the metropolises of Berlin and Paris (Wirsching 1999) to the political behavioral patterns in rural milieus (Kittel 2000), from the problems of the parliamentary system (Raithel 2005) to the relations between employers and unions (Weber 2010) and the susceptibility of German and French intellectuals for the totalitarian temptation offered by the Soviet Union (Oberloskamp 2011). This was rounded off by study on the political biography of Paul Reynaud, the last Prime Minister of the Third Republic (Grüner 2001), and on left-wing French governmental coalitions (Neri-Ultsch 2005) as well as a conference volume (Möller/Kittel 2002). 

One important result of the overall project was that the greater fragility of the Weimar Republic, as compared to France, lay not only in the more extreme political, economic, and social challenges. The exacerbation of the crises was also precipitated by the lack of an integrating political culture that had developed in Francez during the course of history.