Politics in Germany

M. Donald Hancock, Henry Krisch

• Publisher: CQ Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781483371108
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Take a sneak peak inside!

Click on the links below to preview the Introduction and Chapter 1. Order your exam copy today by clicking on the "Request an Exam Copy" link above.
Introduction
Chapter 1

Germans born in the second decade of the last century will have been a subject of no less than six political regimes, seven if they lived in the former German Democratic Republic. Today, Germany's democratic polity, pluralistic society, institutional structures, and market economy are growing increasingly strong. In clear and compelling prose, Hancock and Krisch argue that German politics today is the politics of a "normal" European democracy moving toward the EU. The authors discuss Germany's course of modernization, which involves rapid industrialization and social development following the nation's first unification in 1871 and its subsequent torturous course of political change embracing Imperial authoritarianism, the democratic experiment of the Weimar Republic, Nazi totalitarianism, and postwar variants of communism and Western-style democracy. Chapters detail the country's political history, as well as its culture, new constitutional debates, parties, and economic policy, and culminate in a look at Germany in global context.

Adopt together with Politics in Britain and Politics in France and pass savings along to your students.
For pricing and ordering information, please contact us at mailto: [email protected]

1

Land, People, Society

Geography, history, and political symbolism loom large over unified Germany. The move of its national government from Bonn on the Rhine to Berlin on the Spree signifies Germany’s redefinition of its status as a nation-state and assumption of a new role in European and world affairs. The election of Gerhard Schröder as head of a national Social Democratic–Green coalition in 1998 and the formation of a Christian Democratic–Social Democratic “grand coalition” government in 2005 under Angela Merkel, Germany’s first female chancellor, marked the rise to power of a new, younger generation of leaders who—while wholly cognizant of their nation’s multiple histories—nonetheless look to the future with measured confidence. The “Berlin republic” has indeed superseded the Bonn and the Weimar republics. It simultaneously retains fundamental political, institutional, and economic attributes of the “old Federal Republic” in the west and imbedded cultural and social features of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the east.

Berlin itself embodies multiple threads of Germany’s past, present, and future. While it was the historical center of Prussian and Imperial German militarism and subsequent National Socialist oppression over Germany and eventually most of Europe, Berlin was also a center of German democracy and cultural achievement in the Weimar era, as well as a Western bulwark during the Cold War and (in the east) the capital of the German Democratic Republic. Sobering reminders of the Nazi legacy are manifest in the form of a vast Russian military cemetery in eastern Berlin, street signs depicting Nazi-era anti-Semitic laws lining a residential street in western Berlin, and a newly constructed Holocaust memorial in the center of the city. Classical structures such as the Brandenburg Gate, the state opera house, Humboldt University, and former royal palaces on the boulevard Unter den Linden in the east contrast smartly with the architecturally prize-winning reconstruction of the Reichstag building; a new chancellery; the sprawling, reconstructed Lehrter train station; and spiraling skyscrapers in Potsdamer Platz (prewar Germany’s equivalent of Times Square and Picadilly Circus). Hitler’s bunker remains buried under a construction site in the shadow of Göring’s former air force ministry, which was transformed into government offices in “GDR times” and subsequently served as the headquarters of the postunification trusteeship agency for privatization in eastern Germany. Brightly lit postmodern buildings line Friedrichstrasse, once a drab connecting point between East Berlin’s major train station and the crossing gate from West Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie. A number of buildings and monuments from GDR times no longer remain.

Unified Germany is the product of centuries of economic, social, and political development. These intertwined processes of system change comprise a complex global process of modernization that has transformed traditionally rural societies into the advanced industrial nations of Western Europe, the Americas, most of the British Commonwealth, and parts of Asia. Germany’s own course of modernization proved singular, involving rapid industrialization and social development following the nation’s first unification in 1871 but also a torturous course of political change that embraced Imperial authoritarianism, the democratic experiment of the Weimar Republic, Nazi totalitarianism, and postwar variants of communism and Western-style democracy. Following a brief conceptual explication of modernization, this chapter focuses on the material and social basis of Germany’s contemporary modernity. Chapter 2 addresses Germany’s tortuous political development from 1871, and chapter 3 explores postwar division and unification.

Modernization as Concept and Process

Modernization can be broadly defined as a historical process by which people in a defined territory acquire increased control over nature and society through the application of advanced technology, science, and expanded social cooperation.¹ A necessary prerequisite is the diffusion of collective values that embrace a shared sense of political community and the idea of progress. This revolution in human consciousness was launched by the Age of Enlightenment, in which Continental and American theorists and political activists put forth transformative ideologies of philosophical liberalism and its later rivals on both the conservative right and socialist left. Other variants of collective human consciousness—not all of which are based on the Enlightenment’s concepts of economic and political progress—range from patriotism founded in collective historical memories and a shared sense of national purpose, religious community, ethnicity, or a blend of these to xenophobic nationalism, religious messianism, and racism.

Germany’s history has many moments worthy of praise and celebration, as this young couple is doing at the 2006 World Cup soccer competition held in Germany. Its history also has many occasions for regret and penance, emotions Chancellor Willy Brandt displayed before the Warsaw Ghetto memorial in Warsaw, Poland, in December 1970.

Historically, modernization measured as active system change began with political development involving the attainment and maintenance of territoriality, the establishment of recognized political authority, the emergence of nation-states as the principal actors in international politics, and the expansion of the concept of “citizenship” and rights of citizens. Modernization subsequently proceeded through closely interrelated processes of economic development and social mobilization. Empirical measures of economic modernization include a long-term continuum from industrialization, which began in the eighteenth century in Britain and the American colonies, to postindustrialization in the latter part of the twentieth century throughout most of Western Europe, North America, and other highly developed regions. This continuum involves, first, the transition from a predominantly agrarian society to one in which most workers are employed in the production and distribution of material goods, and, subsequently, the transformation of such a society into one in which a majority of people are engaged in public or private services; the creation and application of new forms of scientific, technological, and social knowledge; or both. The explosion of a mass entertainment industry—including music, movies, videos, and television—is another manifestation of postindustrial society. (We address specific German manifestations of some of these aspects of “popular culture” in chapter 4.)

Accompanying the emergence of postindustrial societies in Europe, North America, and other economically advanced regions has been the diffusion of what scholar Ronald Inglehart has described as postmaterialist values. In contrast to materialist values, which affirm basic survival needs such as food, shelter, and security, postmaterialist values embrace individual desires to belong to informal groups that extend beyond the biological family and inherited social class, an increased emphasis on work satisfaction, greater aesthetic sensitivity, and a quest for enhanced self-esteem and self-realization.² As Inglehart argues:

The values of Western publics have been shifting from an overwhelming emphasis on material well-being and physical security toward greater emphasis on the quality of life.… Today, an unprecedently large portion of Western populations have been raised under conditions of exceptional economic security. Economic and physical security continue to be valued positively, but their relative priority is lower than in the past.³

These value changes have as significant consequences for political and social behavior in contemporary society in Germany as they do elsewhere, as we argue (following Inglehart’s lead) in later chapters. To the extent that the GDR, like its fellow Soviet bloc societies, lagged substantially behind Western countries in the postindustrial transition, attitudes in eastern Germany differ in important ways from those in western Germany.

Like political modernization, social mobilization is a multifaceted dimension of modernization. Requisites include urbanization and enhanced communication among citizens through greater individual proximity and the diffusion of new forms of information exchange and consciousness-raising socialization experiences, both of which are provided in part through such media as newspapers and—in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries—radio, television, and the Internet. Equally crucial is the role of education in promoting the acquisition of new individual-mass skills, such as literacy and technical competence with increasingly sophisticated machines ranging from those on the assembly line through mechanized farm equipment and transportation vehicles to today’s computer technology. Social mobilization also involves the formation of new types of organizations that integrate workers, farmers, and other groups into industrial and postindustrial society. Examples include trade unions, agrarian cooperatives, political parties, professional interest groups, and grassroots mobilization movements.

Modernization has assumed a vast range of forms over time and around the world. It may be gradual and driven largely by private groups and interests, as was the case in the transition of the United States from an agrarian society to an industrial democracy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It may be coercive and directed by central government power, as was the case in Stalinist Russia and postrevolutionary China and Cuba, or it can assume some combination of these historical patterns. These contrasting patterns and outcomes underscore the relativity of modernity; there is no universal model of economic, social, and political development. Moreover, as Samuel Huntington has persuasively argued, modernization is not a unilinear process; nations and regions may indeed attain new levels of modernizing change, but they also may undergo regressive change in the form of economic recessions, political decay, or both.⁴

Nor is modernization an unmitigated social blessing. Much of its impetus has arisen from warfare, with its resultant physical destruction and immeasurable costs to human lives. Both industrialization and postindustrialization have disrupted the lives of countless people over time, depriving entire occupational groups of their traditional livelihoods and uprooting individuals from family group, residence, and religious moorings. Similarly, the application of advanced scientific and technological knowledge has resulted in devastating unintended consequences, as grimly testified to by the estimated ten thousand birth defects caused by the drug Thalidomide during the 1950s and early 1960s and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine in 1986.⁵

It is our argument in this book that Germany has undergone a modernizing process in large measure congruent with that of other modern European (and to perhaps a lesser extent, non-European) countries, with the result that its political, social, and economic orders closely resemble theirs. Of course, Germany has had some unique historical experiences—the Hitler era with its Holocaust and postwar occupation and division are obvious examples—but similar observations could be made about many other European Union (EU) states—Italian fascism, French collaboration, and the very different experiences of European countries during World War II are prominent examples. We will show in subsequent chapters that Germany’s postwar development (1945–2008) has made it a standard modernized society.

Physical Geography

Germany’s natural and human resources constitute the material and social basis for the nation’s historical process of modernization as well as its contemporary status as one of the most important countries in Europe. Its geographical location means that German economic performance and its domestic and foreign policies are fatefully intertwined with those of its neighboring states and the European continent as a whole.

Unified Germany has a clearly defined national territory encompassing 137,735 square miles (356,733 square kilometers), which exceeds the size of both Italy and the United Kingdom but is eclipsed by France.⁶ Germany borders on fully nine countries: Denmark in the north; Poland and the Czech Republic to the east; Austria and Switzerland to the south; and France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg to the west. The country consists of three principal geographical regions: a mountainous region bordering Austria in the south, an uplands region stretching across the central part of the country from west to east, and a lowland plain region along the northern seacoasts and the border with Denmark. Climatic conditions vary among these regions depending on elevation and proximity to the warming waters of the North Atlantic. The coldest parts of the country in winter can be found in the Bavarian Alps in the south and parts of eastern and northeastern Germany. Physically, the regions are closely integrated through a vast network of rivers, shipping canals, and highly adv...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Boxes, Maps, Figures, and Tables
• Preface
• Introduction Germany as a Normal Democratic Polity
• 1. Land, People, Society
• 2. A Turbulent History Is Prologue to the Present
• 3. Germany Divided and Unified
• 4. Political and Popular Culture
• 5. Constitutional Principles and Political Institutions
• 6. Political Parties in a Democratic Polity
• 7. Election Outcomes and Voting Trends
• 8. Organized Interest Groups and Social Movements
• 9. Socioeconomic Policies and Performance
• 10. Germany in Europe and the World
• 11. Germany in the Twenty-First Century
• Notes
• Further Reading
• Index