problems strengthened the Green party in both federal and state
elections. Further, given the economic problems, guest workers, who
represented almost 10 per cent of western Germany's population in
1989, were less welcome than in the 1960s. Nevertheless, it is a sign of
the stability of western Germany's democracy that these problems did
not lead to significant and widespread opposition to the political
system itself during the 1970s and 1980s.

The growing success of western Germany's smooth-running demo-
cracy is reflected in the attitudes and behaviour of, especially, western
Germans born and raised after the Second World War ( Baker,
Dalton, and Hildebrandt 1981; Dalton 1992). A growing proportion
of citizens who did not experience an authoritarian system increas-
ingly supported the institutions of the Federal Republic. The evolving
democratic maturity of younger western Germans in particular is also
reflected in the growing democratic behaviour of the post-war cohort.
The first evidence emerged during the student revolts in the late 1960s.
Although some participants became members of a terrorist organiza-
tion--the Baader-Meinhof Gang, later called the Red Army Faction
--most students participated peacefully in demonstrations against
traditional university structures. Equally important, many western
Germans from different social strata began to participate in environ-
mental, peace, and women's movements. By the 1980s there were as
many members in traditional political parties as in grass-roots
organizations outside established parties. Not only did supporters of
these latter groups advocate new policy priorities--environmental
protection was valued as much or more than economic growth, for
example--but this voluntary participation in grass-roots organiza-
tions indicated that western Germans became increasingly self-reliant
in expressing their political views independent of the dominant elite
views. On the whole, by the time of Germany's unification in October
1990 most observers agreed that western Germany had become a
mature and viable democracy.

Both the East and the West attempted to make the ideological views
of citizens conform to the operations and ideological premisses of
the political system. However, unlike the eastern German system, the

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