German unification and the continuity of discontinuities: Cultural change and the far right in east and west

Abstract

This paper contrasts the right‐wing potential in east and west Germany before and after unification in 1990 and relates it to patterns and changes in the east and west German political processes. The first is a restructuring of the political spectrum of the Bonn Republic prior to the fall of the Wall in which an electoral potential for new right‐wing parties has emerged. The second is the rapid and fundamental transformation process in the east and after the collapse of state socialism which takes place in the context of a modified subject culture with authoritarian and traditional patterns. Unification reinforces authoritarian and traditional patterns. Unification enforces those dynamics which had prepared the ground for the emergence of the New Right in the west while adding the insecurities and imponderabilities of the transformation process in the east.