1. International Conferences: The Postwar Transformation of Germany Democracy, Prosperity and Nationhood
- Author:
- Gregg O. Kvistad, Andrei S. Markovits, Thomas Banchoff, Wolfgang Krieger, Patricia Davis, Jost Halfmann, Peter H. Merkl, Donald P. KOmmers, Ernst B. Haas, Peter Kruger, Ludger Lindlar, Christhard Hoffman, Charles Maier, and Michaela Richter
- Publication Date:
- 11-1995
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute of European Studies
- Abstract:
- The founding of the Federal Republic of Germany as a democracy had two primary negative referents: the institutional weakness of the Weimar Republic that made it susceptible to the Nazi seizure of power and the authoritarian statist tradition of the nineteenth century. This essay argues that the institutionalization of the professional civil service in the early Federal Republic drew selectively on these negative examples, somewhat ambiguously exchanging the location of political parties and the professional civil service, but retaining substantial elements of subsequent redefinition of the role of the German citizen. Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, German statism was rendered "inappropriate" not only for German society, but also for the institutional identity of Germany's venerated professional civil service.
- Topic:
- Cold War and Nationalism
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Germany