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Problem or Model? West Germany in the 1980s

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DavidCalleo, The German Problem Reconsidered: Germany and the World Order, 1870 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978, 239 pp., $11.95.
LewisEdinger, Politics in West Germany (2d ed.; revision of Politics in Germany). Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1977, 375 pp., $6.95 paper.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Peter J. Katzenstein
Peter J. Katzenstein
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Abstract

Political interpretations of Germany have shifted from their traditional concern over its instability and aggressiveness to an appreciation of West Germany's newly found stability and peacefulness. But the penchant of the Bonn Republic for stability creates new political problems in a world that experiences accelerating rates of political and economic changes.

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Type
Review Articles
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World Politics , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , July 1980, pp. 577 - 598
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1980

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References

1 Recent years have witnessed the publication of a growing number of English-language textbooks and bibliographies. Besides Edinger's Politics in West Germany, recent textbooks include Conradt, David P., The German Polity (New York: Longman, 1978Google Scholar); Gunther Kloss, West Germany: An Introduction (London: Macmillan, 1976); Heidenheimer, Arnold J. and Kommers, Donald P., The Governments of Germany (4th ed.; New York: Crowell, 1975)Google Scholar; Goldman, Guido, The German Political System (New York: Random House, 1974)Google Scholar; Sontheimer, Kurt, The Government and Politics of West Germany (New York: Praeger, 1972)Google Scholar; and Grosser, Alfred, Germany in Our Time: A Political History of the Postwar Years (New York: Praeger, 1971)Google Scholar. The most important English-language bibliographies include the first three volumes of Beyme, Klaus von, ed., German Political Studies (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1974–1978)Google Scholar, each of which includes an extensive bibliographical essay or bibliography; Ashford, Douglas E., Katzenstein, Peter J., and Pempel, T. J., Comparative Public Policy: A Cross-National Bibliography (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1978)Google Scholar, which contains a selected, annotated bibliography of West German material in eight public policy cases; Merritt, Anna J. and Merritt, Richard L., Politics, Economics, and Society in the Two Germanics, 1945—1975. A Bibliography of English-Language Works (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Price, Arnold H., The Federal Republic of Germany: A Selected Bibliography of English-Language Publications (2d rev. ed., Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1978)Google Scholar; Conradt, David P., ed., Research Directory 1976 (Conference Group on German Politics, 1976)Google Scholar; Hersch, Gisela, A Bibliography of German Studies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972)Google Scholar.

2 Fischer, , Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: Norton, 1967)Google Scholar, and The War of Illusions (New York: Norton, 1975)Google Scholar; Stern, Fritz, The Failure of Illiberalism: Essays on the Political Culture of Modern Germany (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1971)Google Scholar, and Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire (New York: Knopf, 1977)Google Scholar; Wehler, , Bismarck und der Imperialismus (Cologne: Kiepenheuer and Witsch, 1969)Google Scholar, summarized in “Bismarck's Imperialism, 1862–1890,” Past and Present, XLVIII (1970), 119–50; Dahrendorf, , Society and Democracy in Germany (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969)Google Scholar; Bracher, , The German Dilemma: The Relationship of State and Democracy (New York: Praeger, 1975)Google Scholar.

3 Kehr, Eckart, Battleship Building and Party Politics in Germany, 1894–1901 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973)Google Scholar.

4 Stern (fn. 2, 1971), 17.

5 Gerschenkron, Alexander, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962)Google Scholar, and Bread and Democracy in Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1943)Google Scholar.

6 In a few instances (pp. 54, 76–77, 105) Calleo refers to the importance of Germany's domestic politics. But his argument is weighted overwhelmingly in favor of the critical importance of international factors.

7 See also Calleo, , Coleridge and the Idea of the Modern State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Calleo, and Rowland, Benjamin M., America and the World Political Economy: Atlantic Dreams and National Realities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973)Google Scholar. Geoffrey Barraclough offers another critique of the liberal interpretation of German history which leads to very different conclusions. See his three articles in The New York Review of Books, October 19, November 2, and November 16, 1972.

8 The difference between the first and the second edition of Edinger's book is substantial and reflects changes in the field of West European politics. The second edition covers questions of political sociology and political culture less intensively and instead devotes more attention to public policy.

9 Puhle, Hans-Jürgen, “Conservatism in Modern German History,” Journal of Contemporary History, XIII (October 1978), 697, 713Google Scholar.

10 Maier, , “The Politics of Productivity: Foundations of American International Economic Policy after World War II,” in Katzenstein, ed., Between Power and Plenty: Foreign Economic Policies of Advanced Industrial States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

11 Mayntz, Renate and Scharpf, Fritz W., Policy-Making in the German Federal Bureaucracy (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1975)Google Scholar; Haftendorn, Helga, Karl, Wolf-Dieter, Krause, Joachim, and Wilker, Lothar, eds., Verwaltete Aussenpolitik: Sicherheits- und entspannungspolitische Entscheidungsprozesse in Bonn (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1978)Google Scholar.

12 Dyson, Kenneth H. F., Party, State, and Bureaucracy in Western Germany (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1977)Google Scholar; Narr, Wolf-Dieter, ed., Auj dem Weg zum Einparteienstaat (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dittberger, Jürgen and Ebbinghausen, Rolf, eds., Parteiensystem in der Legitimationskfise: Studien und Materialien zur Soziologie der Parteien in der Bundesrepubli\ Deutschland (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Dahrendorf (fn. 2), 252–65.

14 The secret coalition since 1976 is due to the dominance of the CDU-CSU in the Federal Diet (Bundesrat) and its control over the arbitration committee which resolves conflicts with Parliament (Bundestag).

15 Lehmbruch, Gerhard, “Liberal Corporatism and Party Government,” Comparative Political Studies, x (April 1977), 91–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 See the recent special issue of Leviathan (No. 1, 1979), which presents some of the preliminary conclusions of a research team at the University of Constance; also the contrasting interpretation in Joachim Hütter's “Die Stellung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Westeuropa: Hegemonie durch wirtschaftliche Dominanz?”, Integration (No. 3, 1978), 103–13.

17 Bleek, Wilhelm, “From Cold War to Ostpolitik: Two Germanys in Search of Separate Identities,” World Politics, XXIX (October 1976), 114–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Schweigler, Gebhard L., National Consciousness in Divided Germany (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1975)Google Scholar; Ashkenasi, Abraham, Modern German Nationalism (New York: Schenkman, 1976)Google Scholar; Snyder, Louis L., Roots of German Nationalism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 278–91Google Scholar.

19 Wolfgang Streeck, “Organizational Consequences of Corporatist Cooperation in West German Labor Unions: A Case Study,” paper presented at the 9th World Congress of Sociology, Panel on Interest Intermediation, Uppsala, August 1978.

20 Michael Kreile, “West Germany: The Dynamics of Expansion,” in Katzenstein (fn. 10), 191–224; Hankel, Wilhelm, “West Germany,” in Kohl, Wilfred L., ed., Economic Foreign Policies of Industrial States (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1977), 105–24Google Scholar.

21 Manfred G. Schmidt, “Die Politik der SPD- und CDU-Regierungen: Eine vergleichende Analyse der Politik der Länderregierungen in der BRD 1952–1977,” paper presented to the DVPW-Arbeitskreis “Parteien, Wahlen, Parlamente,” Neuss, February 1979, p. 27; Jane Kramer, “A Reporter in Europe,” The New Yorker, March 20, 1978, p. 44–87; Minnerup, Günter, “West Germany Since the War,” The New Left Review, Vol. 99 (October 1976), 40–43Google Scholar; Terrorism and Politics in West Germany (Cambridge, CAPG, n.d.); Krieger, Wolfgang, “Worrying about West German Democracy,” Political Quarterly, Vol. 50 (April-June 1979), 192–204CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cobler, Sebastian, Law, Order and Politics in West Germany (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978)Google Scholar; and Edinger, pp. 360–62.