To say that Germany's political and socio-economic development since 1945 has been successful is a statement of the obvious. Whilst defining ‘success’ can, to use the old adage, frequently be like trying to nail a blancmange to a wall, there can be little doubt that the term is apt in this case. The German social market economy remains, despite the buffeting that the world economy has taken during the recent global recession, remarkably resilient, regularly vying for the title of Exportweltmeister (world's most important exporting country) with China. Welfare provision remains broadly available and very comprehensive in scope. German civil society is vibrant and prickly, crime rates are low, standards of living high (no matter how they are measured) and social dislocation nowhere near as obvious or deeply-rooted as in many of Germany's closest allies.Footnote1
And yet, as every analyst of contemporary Germany also knows, past or even contemporary success does not inevitably confer either a positive attitude towards future developments or indeed future success itself. No matter how much stability and objective success Germany has enjoyed over the 60 years since its founding, indisputable problems and challenges lurk very close to the surface.Footnote2 Germany has a rapidly ageing population and this will have (potentially dramatic) effects on future financial management and the parameters of future policy-making. Unemployment has become a serious issue not just in the eastern states, but also in significant parts of western Germany. Crafting balanced budgets remains a task fraught with difficulty. Engaging in any sort of reform project can be both time-consuming and very frustrating, whilst Germans themselves, as even the most cursory glance at opinion poll data reveals, are often quick to articulate their own worries and scepticism about where their country is going. Throw in on-going worries about ‘uniting’ two quite different pre-1989 states and a global recession, and the challenges clearly remain considerable.
In this Special Issue we intend to look back over some of the key issues that have shaped 60 years of democratic politics in the Federal Republic with a mind to analysing how German elites are going to deal with some of the challenges listed above. The last 60 years have given Germans much to be proud about, but there is also undoubtedly much that should concern them. We hope that the articles here illustrate that although change can be both intimidating and daunting, there is more than enough evidence of flexibility and durability in Germany's recent past to inspire confidence in Germany being able to move with the times.
UNITY IN DIVERSITY?
Although the problems touched on above (and throughout this Special Issue) are serious, they have still prompted only very few people to attempt to undermine Germany's constitutional framework. Fewer people still genuinely want to return to the GDR (or other non-democratic forms of governance), and this applies even to those on the (far) left who are liable to stress that the GDR had ‘some good sides too’.Footnote3 Indeed, a lurch towards ideological extremism the like of which took place in the Weimar years has been notable by its absence. The question, as Russell Dalton and Steven Weldon illustrate in their contribution here, is not whether Germany is going to ‘make it’ as a democratic polity – it has long since proven that it has done this already. It is much more a question of how this democratic polity will come to terms with challenging problems. Indeed, the political battles that are fought actually have a very conventional look about them. They are about resource allocation, and about who has power and influence and why, and who is going to be asked to pay for what. These debates may well have a particularly German feel (no other state has come up with intricate processes along the lines of a Länderfinanzausgleich or a Solidaritätszuschlag, or even had such difficulty in creating what for many might be positively mundane – such as a national non-smoking lawFootnote4), but they are the conventional territory of democratic politics. And in the twenty-first century dissatisfaction, protest and fiercely partisan disputes are part and parcel of this.
But this does not mean that there have not been serious difficulties. Social and economic dislocation in the East and the inability to push through political reforms in important areas such as taxation, welfare expenditure, immigration, pension reform and federalism plus an increasing general disaffection with, or arguably a contempt for, politics (Politikverachtung), have all become much more prevalent in recent years. Indeed, the social, political and particularly economic divides between the eastern and western Länder have prompted many people to ask whether the constitutional unification of Germany is masking real and genuine divides between a much poorer, moody and dissatisfied east and a richer, less grumpy and more phlegmatic west. On the one hand, authors such as Joyce Marie Mushaben (in this Special Issue) argue that opportunity structures vary considerably not just between east and west, but also across gender lines and across ethnic divides. They see talk of inner unity as overlooking the deep-rooted differences that Germans (and non-Germans living in Germany) experience. Others, whilst not doubting the differences described, construct a different narrative. As early as 1997, for example, Hans Joachim Veen claimed that inner unity had to all intents and purposes been achieved.Footnote5 For Veen, there is widespread acceptance of constitutional norms, and there is very little willingness to fundamentally change Germany's Basic Law and with it its institutions of governance. Germans may not like politicians that much, but they have no wish whatsoever to throw in the towel as far as democracy is concerned. The problems that they do have, and Veen was careful not to belittle them, were ones that many nations, whether it be for example the USA with its culture wars or Italy with its deep-rooted north–south conflict, have to deal with. To bemoan a lack of inner unity subconsciously implies that there is actually a state of unity that has somehow not yet been realised. One presumes that unity of outcome is not the goal, but over and above this it is not clear what exactly Veen's critics are calling for. And whatever it might be, Germans agree that there is only one way of achieving it, and that is through the democratic political process.
GONE BUT MOST CERTAINLY NOT FORGOTTEN
Even if Germany has arguably become a ‘normal’ state, dealing with a ‘normal’ set of (often complex and perplexing) problems in recent years, few countries remain as conscious and aware of learning lessons from the past as does the Federal Republic. The Holocaust and the legacy of the Third Reich have left indelible marks on many aspects of contemporary political life. And one of these is the specific question of how to face down such an unsavoury past in the attempt to ‘master it’ or deal with something that simply ‘won't go away’.Footnote6 It took time for the multi-faceted processes of Vergangenheitsbewältigung to generate genuine understanding of what went on in, and what should be learnt from, the pre-1945 era, even though (not inconsiderable) efforts were made to deal with this period through the 1940s and 1950s. However, it took the tumultuous events of the 1960s to really increase the depth and momentum of these processes and debates. Indeed, and as Eric Langenbacher argues in this Special Issue, they resulted in high-profile debates between historians (Historikerstreit) in the 1980s (perhaps only in Germany could an abstract debate between historians be genuinely front page news), that greatly influenced politics and culture subsequently, largely determining acceptable discourses, taboos and policy alternatives in domestic and international arenas. These influences continued through and beyond unification in 1990, despite worries in some quarters about the dangers of Germany re-awakening as the potentially overbearing political and economic power in Europe.
In recent times we have none the less seen subtle but significant changes in attitudes towards Germany's past. Gerhard Schröder may well have gone too far for many when he called for a ‘German Way’ in foreign policy, but memories and attitudes have undoubtedly shifted in certain areas.Footnote7 German suffering during World War II, for example, has become a high profile arena for debate, and the creation of a museum and documentation centre in Berlin analysing the history of the expulsion of Germans after World War II has caused not inconsiderable controversy – mainly as the nomination of CDU politician Erika Steinbach, the President of the Association of Expellees (Bund der Vertriebenen), to the museum's advisory board caused such consternation in Poland and also arguably within the liberal FDP.Footnote8
Understanding Germany's history (both pre- and post-1945) is also important in making sense of the multiplicity of identities that exist within its borders. On one interpretation diverse sets of self-understandings can pose challenges and threats to national unity. On the one hand, and as Joyce Mushaben discusses in this Special Issue, diversity need not be seen in these threatening terms. Mushaben argues that the relationship between Germans and non-nationals living in Germany is one which still needs plenty more work, and much more of that work needs to be done on the German side than is traditionally realised. Indeed, Mushaben argues in particular that more thinking needs to be done on what exactly German identity should mean, and bemoans the missed opportunity that unification offered to go about reconsidering this question. Mushaben is also forceful in arguing that Germans themselves need to make more effort to come to terms with ‘difference’ – whatever that is understood as implying – in their midst, and that it is only under the Chancellorship of Angela Merkel that the prospect of making any real progress has arisen in this area.
Analysis of identity politics and increased diversity over the last 20 years has also inevitably included discussion of the role and place of eastern Germany, and eastern German citizens, in the expanded Federal Republic. And with good reason. Eastern Germany is destined to remain socio-economically and politically ‘different’ for many years to come. The brain drain westwards will continue and there is a real danger that easterners will become further disenchanted with the outputs of both the social market economy and Germany's political institutions. Easterners, so the doom-sayers argue, are likely not just to look defensively backwards to the GDR for inspiration but also to the appeals of political extremists who make promises that they will never have a chance of fulfilling. This scenario paints eastern German distinctiveness in particular as a disruptive and disaffecting force, ultimately posing a challenge to the whole ethos on which post-1945 (West) Germany has been built.
A more positive and arguably more realistic scenario is also conceivable. Eastern Germany remains a territory with serious socio-economic problems. But there is a little evidence to suggest that easterners reject Germany's constitutional consensus and support for politically extremist parties remains no higher than it is in most other western European countries. Eastern German distinctiveness tends, if anything, to find political voice in support for the Left Party, a party that is now well on the way towards political acceptability. Unity in diversity has been a trademark of Germany for many years. The Ostalgie phenomenon may well be used and abused by groups with vested interests in defending their behaviour in the GDR, but for most people it is a way of linking their twenty-first century existence in the FRG with the pre-1989 existence in what – in just about every way imaginable – was a completely different social, economic and political setting. Plus, as Paul Cooke has pointed out, it may all be ‘so noughties’ anyway.Footnote9 The challenges of integrating eastern Germany into the mainstream of German society are not to be shirked; but they should also not be seen as insurmountable.
GERMANY IN EUROPE AND THE WIDER WORLD
Germany's wider political stability and socio-economic success have been built on consistent behaviour towards its foreign partners. Rehabilitating Germany internationally was one of the most significant issues facing immediate post-war governments. In the ten years after World War II the FRG was able to forge two crucial external ties, one with the United States and the other with France. Both countries provided a lifeline in terms of helping Germany gain equal status among the family of nations, allowing it to establish both internal and external stability. Relations with the French, for example, helped start the groundwork for what would become the European Communities and later European Union, whilst relations with the United States enabled the West Germany to obtain NATO membership and security protection via its collective defence arrangement.
Successful though Germany's post-war integration into the international community was, peaceful reconstruction took time, effort, patience and no shortage of commitment. Germany had to face challenges and find answers to delicate policy dilemmas. Indeed, Germany's decision to accept the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Common External Trade Policy (CETP) of the EU, which affected US poultry exports to the FRG, raised questions about the linkage of security and economic affairs in German–US relations. Delicate diplomacy was needed to placate American worries. The introduction of Ostpolitik raised fears, primarily (although not exclusively) in France, that the forging of closer ties with Eastern Europe could push the FRG into neutralism, detract from its commitment to the EU and NATO, and allow the then Soviet Union to drive a wedge between the United States and its European allies.
Further challenges came and went in the 1970s; turbulence in international economic and financial matters, the increasing strength of the Deutsch Mark and German trade surpluses, growing trade disputes between the EU and the US, and the rising demands by the United States for a fairer burden-sharing arrangement of American security for Europe all tested Germany's relationships with its partners in different ways. However, the prevailing economic and financial difficulties actually strengthened Franco-German relations and led Valery Giscard d'Estaing and Helmut Schmidt to establish the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) in 1979 and to further commit their countries to deeper European integration through the 1980s. A further by-product of the epoch was the unilateral role of the German Bundesbank in setting the interest rates for other EU countries, and the Lehrmeister role Germany assumed by preaching to its European partners the principles of ‘sound’ economics.
Another area of modern-day contention, if articulated in a relatively quiet and non-confrontational fashion, is the position, goals and aims of Germany within the European Union. Over the last 60 years, and as Willie Paterson argues in this Special Issue, Germany's relationship with the EU can be characterised as falling into three distinct eras. In the first stage there was a broad consensus supporting European integration as a vital secondary arena assisting Germany in establishing both its democratic credentials and economic prosperity. The second phase began in the late 1970s and accelerated during the long Chancellorship of Helmut Kohl. This period saw Germany commit both to ever closer union and also to a long process of uploading its own institutional frameworks. Germans and Germany subsequently remained committed to an ever-deeper process of European integration. The final period of more critical commitment was ushered in during the late 1990s and saw Germany remain committed to the European project, but more likely to pursue its increasingly divergent set of preferences. This current period, as Paterson argues, might best be described as scaled-back commitment.
This relationship with the EU has been at the core of Germany's post-war development. It has been absolutely vital in ensuring that Germany's economic rise has not been viewed as a threat by its neighbours. But the onset of the post-Cold War era has seen parameters change and institutional frameworks develop accordingly. Germany has always followed its national interest in the EU, but for much of the post-war era it just happened that the Germany's interests were also those of the EU itself. Post-1989 this has changed; Germany still has the same basic ideals as its European partners, but a more economically, socially and politically diverse EU naturally means that Germany will need to recalibrate its interests and behaviour accordingly.
A rising number of international conflicts also pose increasing challenges to the existing German ‘culture of restraint’ in military affairs, which affects German peacekeeping contributions. Jim Sperling, in his contribution to this Special Issue, identifies German reluctance to contribute fully to the resolution of international conflicts as undermining German–American relations and as one more reason why the US is shifting its economic and political orientation from Germany/Europe to the Far East. These are complex policy challenges that do not fall in to easy categories and they are challenges which will demand skilful diplomatic skills from Germany's politicians.
POLITICAL PARTIES
Another area where Germans will have to get used to different – and arguably more challenging – sets of circumstances is in terms of the country's party politics. Not least, there is a real need to restore some sort of faith in the political process. Interestingly, empirical evidence indicates that while Germans are generally disdainful of their political leaders, the situation is actually worse in a number of other western countries (Israel, Portugal, Slovakia and Poland, for example) and there is little evidence of any sort of widespread rejection of democratic principles.Footnote10 Be that as it may, there is – and has been for at least the last decade – a strong sense of disdain for politics across German society. The awful start that the post-2009 CDU/CSU–FDP government has experienced since coming into office, with high profile ministerial resignations and a number of significant inner-coalition arguments over policy and responsibility,Footnote11 has done little to alleviate the impression that politicians remain aloof from the citizens that they claim to represent and, even worse, unable to pursue concerted policies of reform.
The most significant debate – in many ways dwarfing all others – is a much more straightforward one; which way now with the process of socio-economic reform? And which parties in which coalitions are most apt to push this process on? The rise of the Left Party and the increasing inability of the centre-left and centre-right to form viable coalition governments makes crafting majorities more difficult than it ever was during the years of the two-and-a-half party system. Parties and politicians now have to work much harder for their votes and, in an era of dealignment and disaffection, voters are no longer prepared to remain as true and loyal as they once did. Parties need to be wise in the methods they adopt for getting their message across as well as able and willing to find solutions to complex sets of policy problems. Changing times require parties to generally sharpen up their act. With this in mind Charles Lees provocatively argues in this Special Issue that in strategic terms the major parties in Germany may not be as badly placed as conventional wisdom often seems to have it; they are still at the core of coalition formation and they still have the power to set and force the agenda. Whether they do this in practice has more to do with the abilities of their leading politicians than they would perhaps like to believe.
CONCLUSION
The socio-economic problems and challenges that German politicians have to tackle in all of the areas covered in this Special Issue are not solely products of short term influences. Many of them have their roots in the pre-unification period and many are subsequently deep-rooted. Modernising the economy, cajoling people that reform does not always have to be bad, and persuading voters to have more faith in the political process remain the key challenges now facing German elites, and these are challenges that would sound familiar to politicians more or less everywhere. In order to overcome them German parties need to come up with some sort of vision of where they want Germany to be (at least) ten years from now. But leadership requires an idea – in broad terms – of where one wants to go. It also requires staying power. And this has been something in painfully short supply in recent years. If Gerhard Schröder's SPD, for example, offered more genuine conviction in introducing Agenda 2010 then Schröder's government might have implemented it earlier, sold it better and – who knows – quite plausibly might have won the 2005 federal election. But where there is no real vision, no belief in where one is going, and only half-hearted attempts to implement policy when all else has seemingly failed, then politicians should not be surprised if voters become disgruntled.
German party politics is now more fluid than at any time since the 1950s. And this does not necessarily have to be seen as a bad thing. Politicians who warn about the dangers of instability can often simply be bemoaning the fact that they now have to fight for their votes more than ever before. That voters are becoming more choosy, and politicians need to spend more time persuading them, sounds suspiciously like democracy at work. Voters are demanding more from their politicians, and it is up to those politicians to explain – in plausible terms – either what these answers are likely to be or why a voter's preferences cannot be realised. In this sense, Germany is perhaps more like other countries now than it, and many of those analysing it, may care to realise.
Notes
See S. Green, D. Hough, A. Miskimmon and G. Timmins, The Politics of the New Germany (London: Routledge, 2007).
For a particularly downbeat analysis of this, see G. Steingart, Deutschland: Abstieg eines Superstars (Munich: Piper, 2004).
For a detailed analysis of left-wing opinions within and around the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and/or Left Party see D. Hough, J. Olsen and M. Koβ, The Left Party in Contemporary German Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), pp.17–19.
For a variety of angles on the efforts of German policy-makers to create a national non-smoking law see ‘Chaos beim Rauchergesetz’, Die Bild Zeitung, 8 Dec. 2006. ‘Bei Rauchergesetz strebt die CDU Kompromiss an’, Die Welt, 28 March 2009; ‘Endlich herrscht Rechtssicherheit’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 3 Aug. 2009.
H-J. Veen, ‘ “Inner Unity” – Back to the Community Myth? A Plea for a Basic Consensus’, German Politics 6/3 (1997), pp.1–15.
C. Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust and German National Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988).
For more on Schröder's German Way, see D.F. Sturm, ‘Schröder's Deutscher Weg’, Die Welt, 6 Aug. 2002.
See ‘Berlin Calms Polish Concerns over Planned Expellee Centre’, Deutsche Welle Online, 16 Feb. 2009; R. Pfister, ‘Splitting the German Government: Expellee Leader Steinbach puts Merkel in a Tight Spot’, Der Spiegel, 24 Nov. 2009.
P. Cooke, ‘Ostalgie's not what it used to be; the German Television GDR Craze of 2003’, German Politics and Society 22/4 (2004), pp.134–50.
See Infratest Dimap, 2005, available at http://tns-infratest.com/03_presse/Presse/2005_01_20_TNS_Infratest_Reputation.pdf (accessed 17 Nov. 2009).
See for example ‘Opel bleibt bei GM: Klatsche für Merkel’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 4 Nov. 2009; ‘German Foreign Minister's Row Puts Merkel in Tough Spot’, Wall Street Journal, 23 Nov. 2009; ‘Carstensen droht mit Rücktritt; Der Steuerstreit in der Union zwischen Kanzlerin und Landespolitikern eskaliert’, Die Zeit, 21 Nov. 2009; ‘How Much did the Chancellor Know? Pressure Mounts on Merkel over Afghan Air Raid Debacle’, Der Spiegel, 30 Nov. 2009.