Democracy and Germany

The fall of the Berlin wall raised many questions about Germany and post-socialist countries. Given East Germany's authoritarian history, how democratic are its citizens now? What kind of democracy do they want a liberal or socialist democracy? What economic system do they prefer? How have they reacted to democratic and market systems since 1989? The book shows how individual institutional learning may be offset by the diffusion of democratic values. The author uses public opinion surveys to compare attitudes of MPs and the general public, and in-depth interviews with parliamentarians in east, and west Berlin to show the persistence of socialist views in the east as well as lower levels of political tolerance. Moreover, the book argues, these values have changed fairly littlesince unification. The author presents evidence and develops implications for other post-socialist nations, arguing that while post-socialist citizens do not yearn for the old socialist order, their socialist values frequently lower enthusiasm for new democratic and market institutions. The implications being that ideological values are primarily shaped by individual exposure to institutions and that democratic and market values are diffused only in specific conditions. More than just an analysis of German political culture, the book offers conpelling conclusions about the future of democracy in all post-socialist states. Robert Rohrschneider won the Stein Rokkan Prize for best book in comparative politics by a young scholar awarded by the International Social Science Committee of UNESCO.

How does a country reconstitute itself as a functioning democracy after a period of dictatorship? Drawing on evidence from intellectual debates, trials, literary works, controversies about the actions of public figures, and partisan competition, Anne Sa'adah analyzes German responses to the problem of reconciliation after 1945 and again after 1989.

This volume offers an account of German political institutions. Each of the chapters, written by leading German specialists, provides an assessment of the institution under consideration as well as the political research in the given field.

This collection by 14 American and European experts provides an informed critical assessment of parallel processes of economic and political transformation from orthodox Marxist-Leninist regimes to contrasting forms of market economies and democratic governance in Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, and eastern Germany.

This book is a succinct history of social democracy in the major states of Western Europe that discusses both the domestic and international factors influencing social democratic politics. It explains why political parties, whose electoral following was rooted in the growing industrial working class, nevertheless failed to become dominant parliamentary forces in their respective political systems. The book concludes by discussing the implication of the social democratic past in Europe for the future of socialist politics in a post-Cold War context.

In a series of essays the contributors to this study explore the influence of the media in forging the unification process that brought East and West Germany together and examine the impact the post-unification process has had on politics, the German Federation and the democratic process itself.