Parties And Politics In Modern Germany

Gerard Braunthal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000311709
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This comprehensive text provides a detailed overview of the party system and politics of one of the most powerful states in the international arena. Noted scholar Gerard Braunthal surveys the parties in the Federal Republic of Germany and in the German Democratic Republic after World War II and in united Germany since 1990. By illustrating the cent

Part One
An International and National Overview

1
Political Parties: A Comparative Perspective

AN ASSESSMENT OF THE German party system will make comparisons to parties and party systems in other polities more meaningful if the diverse analytical approaches to studying parties in a supranational context are highlighted first. This chapter therefore deals with the historical origins of parties in several countries; the discord on definitions of parties; their competitiveness, or lack of it, in national political systems; their ideological or pragmatic orientation; their organizational structures; their ability to mobilize members and voters; and their functions.

Historical Origins

Parties in different forms have existed since the creation of political systems. In Roman times, circa 450 B.C., the rudimentary ancestors of parties, known as "factions" (derived from the Latin word facere, to do, to act), emerged. At the time, a small privileged patrician class despotically ruled Rome. It took a century for the large plebian class, through numerous struggles, to achieve political equality with the patricians.

From the twelfth to the fourteenth century, two rival political factions of notables—the Ghibellines, supporting the emperors, and the Guelphs, supporting the popes—plunged Italy into warfare. The factions, which had each controlled a few cities, disappeared with the decline of the rivalry between papacy and empire.

In the seventeenth century, the term "party" (derived from the Latin partire, to partition) came into use in Europe. Like the factions, the parties had no mass basis but were groups of aristocratic leaders who surrounded themselves with a coterie of loyal followers. Later these groups became parties of notables or propertied men who supported candidates for seats in parliaments.

Many political observers denounced parties and factions for undermining and endangering the governments in power. In Britain, these observers criticized the feuds between the Tories and Whigs, two governing aristocratic factions, following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Viscount Bolingbroke, statesman and political writer, wrote in 1738: "Governing by party . . . must always end in the government of a faction. . . . Party is a political evil, and faction is the worst of all parties."¹

In 1770, Edmund Burke, another well-known British statesman and writer, rejected the negative image of parties. He developed a more positive meaning: "Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavor the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed."² Burke saw British parties as organizations contributing to the consensus on constitutional practices.

In France, the revolutionary ferment in 1789 accentuated the divisions in society, which led to the founding of political clubs. Representatives to the Estates General {later, National Constituent Assembly), who met in Versailles and Paris to discuss the collapse of the royal absolutist regime and the creation of a republican regime, realized that they shared common interests spanning the provinces. Girondists and Jacobins, and later Montagnards, organized, each espousing different ideologies. By the time the French Constituent Assembly met in 1848, groups of moderate republicans, Catholic monarchists, rightists, and leftists had formed, creating a system of modern parties. However, they identified themselves by the name of the place where they met rather than by their embryonic ideologies.³

In the United States, George Washington and John Madison warned that factions and parties were divisive and endangered the rights of citizens. But they could not halt the emergence of the class-based parties—the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, and the Anti-Federalists, led by Thomas Jefferson. From the 1830s on, the parties assumed greater importance as legislatures became more representative and suffrage was extended. At the same time, party politicians, heading the successor parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, built up a system of patronage under the protection of corrupt state and city machines. As a consequence, around the turn of the twentieth century some writers again characterized the parties and their bosses as perversions of the general will.⁴

Discord on Definitions

Once modern parties had developed in many countries, scholars questioned how to define and categorize them—that is, what features and functions characterized them within various governmental systems? According to Giovanni Sartori, "A party is any political group identified by an official label that presents at elections, and is capable of placing through elections (free or nonfree), candidates for public office."⁵

Sigmund Neumann, who underlines the importance of a party as a "life-line of modern politics," writes that it is "the articulate organization of society's active political agents, those who are concerned with the control of governmental power and who compete for popular support with another group or groups holding divergent views. As such it is the great intermediary which links social forces and ideologies to official governmental institutions and relates them to political action within the larger political community."⁶

Thomas Hodgkin broadens the definition to include parties in one-party noncompetitive states: "It is probably most convenient to consider as 'parties all political organizations which regard themselves as parties and which are generally so regarded."⁷ Sigmund Neumann disagrees, arguing that to call the Nazi Party in totalitarian Germany a party is wrong because there was no freedom to belong to another party. According to him, "The dictatorial party's monopoly, which prevents the free formation and expression of opinion, is the precise antithesis of the party system," which he characterizes as having more than one party.⁸

Classifying Parties by Competition

As the controversy over definitions indicates, scholars do not agree on how to best analyze parties and party systems. They therefore study parties from different perspectives, one of which is to classify systems by the degree of competition among parties as measured by their number and strength in any one state. However, there are a very few states, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran, in which powerful monarchs, sheikhs, and clerics reign who do not allow any party to operate for fear that it could threaten their rule.

One-Party Systems

More frequently, dictatorial rulers allow only one ideological party or movement to exist as a way of legitimizing the regime and ensuring the population's loyalty to the state. In the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany, the former Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, the monolithic party in power controlled all aspects of society and the state. Similarly, in most civilian or military authoritarian regimes, such as those found on nearly all continents {e.g., in various periods, Zaire, Liberia, Portugal, Spain, Pakistan, Indonesia, Argentina, and Brazil), government leaders permitted or permit only one party to function. However, the dictatorial rule is less oppressive and the party less ideologically driven than in totalitarian systems. Opposition groups may be able to operate clandestinely until the system eventually collapses or the military hands over power to party politicians.⁹

Not all one-party states are ruled by dictators. After World War II, the charismatic leaders of newly independent Third World states, especially in Africa, converted the popular movements or parties that had battled the colonial masters into one dominant force within the new democratic political system. To some leaders, granting people the right to participate in local governing units ("people's power") was more important during the transition stage than a competitive party system, which might produce rivalries among conflicting regional interests that the country could ill afford. Unfortunately, democracy in many of these countries did not survive the eruption of fierce tribal, ethnic, or religious conflicts; the rise of personal dictatorships; or the seizure of power by military juntas.¹⁰

In Algeria, for instance, the National Liberation Front (FLN) battled the French colonial government from 1954 to 1962, when independence was finally achieved. Thereafter Ahmed Ben Bella, the highly popular leader of the FLN who became prime minister and president, ruled over a limited democratic and socialist system in which the FLN was the sole party but in which power soon shifted to the bureaucracy and the military. The system lasted only three years. In 1965, an army junta overthrew the government and installed Colonel Houari Boumédienne as head of a revolutionary council. As a result of military rule, opposition groups disagreeing with the policies of the government surfaced. In 1989, short-lived constitutional reforms allowed opposition parties to form legally and made the prime minister responsible to the legislature rather than to the FLN.

In 1992, the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) won the election and, under democratic principles, should have been allowed to form a new government. The secular government refused to accept the popular verdict, claiming that the Muslim FIS, once in power, would severely restrict the rights of non-Muslims. Thereupon angry FIS militants created serious civil disturbances, leading swiftly to a government ban on the FIS. In effect, the government ruled by force, and the nascent multiparty system collapsed.

Similar regime instability is prevalent in most other African states and on other continents as well. In some Latin American countries, the ruling party is merely the tool of a powerful state regime. Rare in Latin America is the example of Mexico, in which a hegemonic party, in this instance the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), has succeeded through the manipulation of power, clientelism, and bribery to remain in power since 1929. Other Mexican parties have had little chance to win even in state elections. In recent years, however, the National Democratic Front—renamed the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD)—has become a leftist rival. Its presidential candidate, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, might have won in 1988 had the PRI not committed widespread electoral fraud. In the 1994 presidential election, the PRI was challenged by two major and six minor parties. The PRI candidate, Ernesto Zedillo, won the presidency, beating Cárdenas (PRD) and Diego Fernández de Cevallos, the candidate of the conservative National Action Party. The examples (among many) of Algeria and Mexico indicate that single-party rule can last for a long time but that the fluidity of power relations between different leaders and groups within and outside the ruling party makes regime changes inevitable.

Two-Party Systems

Two-party systems, such as those in the United States and Great Britain, are more competitive than one-party systems. Normally, the two parties alternate in power over the course of time. In each national election, one of them receives an absolute majority of the vote or a majority of legislative seats. It then forms a single-party cabinet, which remains in power until the next presidential or parliamentary election.

In the United States, the Republican and Democratic Parties have monopolized seats in Congress ever since the Civil War. Their candidates have won every presidential election. However, with weak party discipline in Congress, a president finds it difficult to gain legislative support for his policy from his own party, even when the party has had a majority in Congress, which has not always been the case.

Numerous third parties and movements, occasionally strong but usually weak, operate on the fringes of the two major U.S. parties. Their candidates for Congress have virtually no chance of winning because the electoral system, in which a candidate must obtain at least a plurality of votes in a single-member district (for the House of Representatives) or in a state (for the Senate), is skewed against minor or new parties attempting to challenge the major parties. Some of these parties, such as those on the left or right of the political spectrum, are doctrinaire; others, such as the Prohibition Party in the 1920s or the Ross Perot populist movement in 1992, arise in response to wide spread protest against the policies of the two major parties or their failure to act on key issues.

In Britain, from 1852 to 1924 the Liberal and Conservative Parties dominated; then Labour replaced the Liberals as the major party battling the Conservatives. The Liberals remain in Parliament, but with few members. A Labour or Conservative one-party cabinet, supported by its disciplined parliamentary group, can translate its electoral mandate into public policy without many roadblocks by the opposition parties in Parliament. The electoral single-member district system, which the United States copied, favors the major parties, one of which will normally gain a plurality of votes and a majority of seats. Yet the British electoral system does give some parliamentary representation to minor parties whose strength is concentrated in certain districts and regions where their candidates are able to beat their major party opponents. However, these parties are not often significant in national policymaking and thus do not destabilize the system.¹¹

Multiparty Systems

Most states have more than two major parties competing for political power. In Australia, three parties (Australian Labour, Liberal, and National) are dominant. In Canada, two major parties (Liberals and Progressive Conservatives) are challenged by the smaller Reform and New Democratic Parties. In other states, competition is high, as in Argentina, with twenty-one parties appearing on the ballot in a recent election.

Scandinavian parties fall in the middle range numerically. Among the six to eight, however, the Social Democrats have usually gained a plurality of votes. Political stability is nearly guaranteed because party leaders, whenever coalition governments are formed, achieve compromises on major issues. With few exceptions, the cabinet manages to remain in power for the length of the legislative session.

In other countries, political stability is a dream rarely realized. Such is Italy. From 1948 on, a coalition of Christian Democrats, Socialists, Liberals, and allied parties repeatedly set up new coalition governments. Before a government was formed, parties, with little in common except the desire to govern, engaged in protracted and laborious negotiations, ending in only some minor ministerial reshuffiing. The government's life span was often less than a year because of internal policy schisms that resulted in a coalition party's decision to quit the government. Communists on the left and monarchists and neofascists on the right were in perpetual opposition in Parliament.

In the early ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Acronyms
• Introduction
• PART ONE An International and National Overview
• PART TWO West German Parties Since World War II
• PART THREE East German Parties Since World War II
• PART FOUR Parties in the Unified Germany
• Appendix: Self-Portraits of the Bundestag Parties, 1994
• Selected Bibliography
• About the Book and Author
• Index