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