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German politics:
An introduction
Some key features
• Remade democracy
• Moderate multipartyism
• Consensus rather than adversarial democracy
• Federal – but with a difference
• Strongly European
The Germany that might have been:
• A large number of parties: – polarized pluralism
• Unstable
• Marginally democratic – if at all
• Revanchist
Remade democracy
• 1945 as year zero• Partition and
truncation of Germany
• Problem: How do you (re-) establish democracy where it did not flourish before?
Shifting boundaries
Shaping postwar Germany
• Allied intentions• Licensing participants• The Cold War• Building institutions
– Political Engineering in the west?
– Cloning in the east?
Shaping the Federal Republic
Constitutional engineering:• Attempts to ensure democracy
– Citizens’ rights up front
• Attempts to ensure stability– Recourse to federalism as a source of checks and
balances– Positive vote of non-confidence– Parties to shape democratic will
• Possibility of banning parties which do not
• Constitutional limits on the external use of force
Seizing opportunities: the cold war
• Joining Europe• Joining NATO• The social market
economy (Ludwig Erhard)• The Marshall Plan and
the economic miracle (wunderwirtschaft
• Result: – a Germany embedded in
Europe and the west
FRG & DDR
• But also a Germany embedded in the east
• FRG: explicitly federal
• DDR: centralized command economy
Remaking political culture
• FRG: – Making democrats– Making participants– Dealing with the past
• Silence• Education• Historians’ debate
• DDR:– Doing it their way:– Remake the economy:
build socialism and you solve the problem
Parties and political forces
• 1949 as the ‘last election of Weimar’• 5% threshold & its impact:
– Use of MMP, double vote– Smaller parties eliminated or absorbed– FRG ends up with three party system
• (later four, then five parties)
SPD FDP
Consensus democracy:
• FRG a system with strong, generally effective leaders• Also a system in which it is difficult for any single actor to
assert his or her will• Coalition government as the norm• Fact of federalism: (16 provinces or laender)
– Leander built into the federal political system via the Bundesrat (Federal Council)
– Enjoy collective veto over all legislation affecting the laender
• Inclusion of organized interests in policy processes• Both encourage a politics of consultation & quiet
negotiation – working it out beforehand
Reunification
Reunification and its impact
• A moving train?
• Absorbing the east: – 5 newly created laender accede to FRG– Institutions continue– East colonized
• Ossies v. Wessies