Germany

Germany is Western Europe's most populous nation, with 82.5 million inhabitants (compared to approximately 58.7 million in both France and the United Kingdom and 57.4 million in Italy), and claims the third largest economy in the world after those of the United States and Japan. Germany is strategically situated at the geopolitical and economic crossroads of Europe, bordering nine countries. Its neighbors are France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands to the west; Denmark to the north; Poland to the east; the Czech Republic and Austria to the southeast; and Switzerland to the south. Germany is a prominent member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a founding member of the European Union.

Germany's geographical features include rolling countryside dotted with farms and forests throughout much of the country, sandy beaches on the shores of the Baltic and North seas, mountains in the south—including a slice of the Alps on the border with Austria—and the Black Forest in the southwest. The most important rivers are the Rhine in the west and the Elbe in the east.

Urban and industrial centers are more decentralized in Germany than in many European countries (notably France and Britain). The three largest cities are Berlin (the country's capital) near the Polish border in the east, Hamburg on the North Sea, and Munich (the capital of the state of Bavaria) in the south. Other cities of note include Cologne and Frankfurt in the western part of the country and Leipzig, Dresden, and Magdeburg in the east.

from division to unification

One of the most dramatic events of late-twentieth-century European politics was the unification of Germany in 1990. This proved a momentous capstone to a long and tortuous pattern of political development rooted in historical traditions of territorial fragmentation, political instability, and military aggression. Germany achieved artificial unity with the creation of the Imperial Reich in 1871, helped provoke World War I (1914–1918), and experienced revolutionary and counterrevolutionary upheavals during the formation of the ill-fated Weimar Republic (1918–1919). Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) and his National Socialist (Nazi) henchmen abolished democracy with the ruthless imposition of the totalitarian Third Reich in 1933 and immediately proceeded with plans to launch another Europe-wide war. They also instigated the arrest and execution of millions of Jews and other regime "outsiders." At the end of World War II (1939–1945) the wartime Allies—the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union—divided Germany into four occupation zones, which were consolidated in 1949 into two antagonistic political and socioeconomic systems: the capitalist democratic Federal Republic of Germany in the West (also known as West Germany) and the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the East (also known as East Germany).

The Federal Republic quickly developed a successful and stable economic and political system. Unprecedented material growth and prosperity contributed to the emergence of a cohesive democratic political culture and the legitimation of the West German political system. In contrast, communist leaders in the East created a dictatorial political and economic system modeled after that of the Soviet Union. Political, economic, and institutional power was centralized in the hands of the monopolistic Marxist–Leninist Socialist Unity Party (SED).

The GDR was never able to attain the levels of prosperity and political legitimacy achieved in the Federal Republic. As a result millions of East German citizens fled to the west. The continuing loss of skilled labor forced the SED to close the border between East and West Berlin by erecting the Berlin Wall in August 1961. The communists maintained themselves and the political system in power through a policy of constant vigilance and repression, enforced by awell-organized and efficient secret police.

Mikhail Gorbachev's (b. 1931) rise to power in the Soviet Union in 1985 unleashed a process of liberalization throughout the communist bloc . By 1989 tens of thousands of mainly younger East Germans had left the GDR via Hungary (which opened its borders to neighboring Austria) and Czechoslovakia. Dissidents who chose to stay at home began taking to the streets in massive demonstrations, demanding freedom, democracy, and (increasingly) unification with the Federal Republic. Hard-line Stalinist rulers were forced to resign in October 1989. Their successors reluctantly agreed with opposition leaders in January 1990 to schedule East Germany's first free elections. The elections were held in March 1990 and resulted in a resounding victory by pro-democratic parties.

A coalition East German government then negotiated unification treaties with West Germany, providing for economic, monetary, and social union and establishing the constitutional basis for political unification. West Germany and East Germany constitutionally merged in October 1990 to form an expanded Federal Republic, and all-German elections were held on December 2. The victors were the center-right Christian Democrats and the liberal Free Democrats, which formed the first postwar all-German government. Thus, Germany became territorially, institutionally, and politically unified for the second time in its history.

constitutional principles

The united Federal Republic embodies traditional features of German governance and a number of important postwar innovations. Historical elements include a written constitution (the first national constitution was adopted when Imperial Germany was established in 1871) and a federal system of government. Federalism is a logical and necessary development from Germany's historical legacy of territorial fragmentation among numerous independent kingdoms,

principalities, and city-states before the country's initial unification. Both Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic were federal systems, with political power divided between a national government and regional states (Länder). Hitler abolished federalism with the creation of a unitary state under totalitarian Nazi control, but the Western Allies reconstituted federalism in their zones of occupation after 1945. West German federalism was anchored in the Basic Law, which was adopted in 1949 as the constitutional basis for the Federal Republic. Federal principles were extended to former East Germany in 1990.

Similar to the American constitution, the Basic Law provides for a system of national, concurrent, and state jurisdiction . The federal government in Berlin exercises exclusive authority over foreign policy, citizenship, the defense of democracy and the constitution, the criminal police, and other all-German policies. It shares concurrent legislation with the country's sixteen states (ten in western Germany, five in eastern Germany, and Berlin) in such areas as civil and criminal law, public welfare, economic policy, and refugee matters. The states exercise primary jurisdiction over public education, the public media, cultural institutions, and policies of strictly regional concern.

German constitutional provisions include the legal protection of individual freedoms similar to those contained in the U.S. Bill of Rights—such as freedom of assembly, opinion, and religion—as well as a number of positive freedoms characteristic of more modern constitutions in Europe and elsewhere. The latter provisions include the protection of human dignity, the sanctity of marriage and families, the protection of illegitimate children, the right of citizens to join unions and professional groups and pursue an occupation of their choice, and safeguards governing private ownership of property and inheritance. Capital punishment is prohibited under the Basic Law.

An important postwar constitutional innovation was the creation of a Federal Constitutional Court, modeled after the U.S. Supreme Court, with powers of judicial review over national and state legislation. The Federal Constitutional Court also is empowered to rule on the constitutionality of political parties. The court twice has banned parties because of their antidemocratic principles.

institutional actors

Principles of federalism and democracy are institutionalized on both the federal and state levels of government. Germany's head of state is an indirectly elected federal president who is chosen for a five-year term by a special electoral college made up of an equal number of national and state legislators. The president represents Germany to the international community, receives foreign dignitaries, and conducts goodwill visits abroad. Otherwise the president exercises few substantive powers. Depending on the personality and political convictions of the incumbent , the most important role of the federal president is to serve as Germany's moral conscience, for example, exhorting citizens to be exemplary democrats. Up to the year 2005 nine men had served as president since 1949. Horst Koehler (b. 1943), a Christian Democrat, was narrowly elected over a Social Democratic candidate in May 2004.

The most important executive power is vested in a federal chancellor (the equivalent of a prime minister) who is constitutionally empowered to determine general policy guidelines and goals. The chancellor is elected by a majority of the members of the lower house of parliament and can be ousted from office only through a vote of no confidence in which a majority of deputies simultaneously elect a successor. This provision has been evoked twice: unsuccessfully in 1972 and successfully in 1982. Once elected, the federal chancellor nominates members of the cabinet to the federal president for formal appointment to office. The powers of the federal chancellor broadly resemble those of the British prime minister, especially with respect to setting the national political agenda and determining policy priorities.

Legislative power on the national level is divided between a directly elected lower house, the Bundestag, and an appointive upper house, the Bundesrat. Both bodies constitute modified institutional reincarnations of legislative assemblies from Germany's past—especially those in the Weimar Republic. Bundestag deputies are elected for four-year terms (unless a special election intervenes, as occurred in 1982) on the basis of a dual ballot that combines direct constituency elections and proportional representation . A key postwar constitutional innovation is the requirement that parties must receive either 5 percent of the popular vote or three direct mandates to be represented in parliament. Members of the Bundesrat are appointed by the sixteen state governments, which in turn are formed on the basis of staggered elections to Länder assemblies.

The number of representatives from each state varies from three to six, depending on the size of a state's population. Bundesrat deputies do not vote as

a matter of personal conscience but instead vote as a bloc on instructions from their state governments. The Bundestag is politically the more powerful of the two houses in that it elects the federal chancellor and provides the institutional basis for most legislative initiatives. At the same time the Bundesrat shares legislative jurisdiction with the lower house in most matters and may exercise an absolute veto over constitutional amendments and changes in Länder boundaries.

parties, elections, and leaders

One of Germany's historical legacies was a complex, highly fragmented party system dating from preunification times and continuing through the Imperial times and Weimar regimes. Most parties were doggedly ideological , often unable to compromise partisan differences. Their failure to seek a common policy response to the crisis of the Great Depression (1929–1933) was an indirect cause of Hitler's rise to power in 1933. Postwar parties have evolved in a significantly different manner.

The wartime Allies authorized the creation of a multiparty system in their four zones of occupation during the spring and summer of 1945. The parties included the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU); a liberal Free Democrats (FDP); the Social Democrats (SPD); and the Communist Party (KPD). In the Soviet zone of occupation the KPD and SPD were merged forcibly to form the communist Socialist Unity Party (SED) in 1946, and the remaining satellite parties were reduced to a subordinate political status. In West Germany, in contrast, a vibrant competitive party system emerged that was dominated by the CDU/CSU, the FDP, and the SPD. The KPD became increasingly marginalized during the formative years of the Federal Republic, first because it failed to surmount the 5 percent electoral threshold by the mid-1950s and later because the Federal Constitutional Court banned it as antidemocratic.

During Germany's political division from 1949 until the move toward unity in 1990, the SED monopolized political power in East Germany, while West Germany's democratic parties—the CDU/CSU, the FDP, and the SPD—alternated in power in various coalitions. The CDU/CSU and the FDP emerged as early advocates of a social market economy policy that combined government support for capitalism and extensive welfare provisions, German participation in European integration, and membership in NATO.

Although all three of West Germany's mainstream political parties resolutely affirmed democratic principles and institutions, SPD leaders initially were skeptical of policy measures that in their view would deepen the country's political division. A crucial consequence of these differences was that the CDU/CSU and the FDP handily won national elections—and therefore formed federal governments—from 1949 well into the 1960s. The SPD abandoned ideological rigidity in 1959 with the adoption of a moderate party program that affirmed German membership in NATO and the European Economic Community (now the European Union). Largely because of the party's shift to the center, the SPD joined the CDU/CSU as junior partners in a grand coalition government in 1966. They subsequently governed in coalition with the FDP from 1969 to 1982 and formed a coalition government with the Greens in 1998 (which was renewed in 2002).

The Greens emerged as a national political force in the early 1980s as part of a Europe-wide phenomenon of citizen protest against environmental pollution and nuclear armament. Their success in surmounting the 5 percent electoral barrier in 1983 transformed the West German system from a two-and-a-half-party system dominated by the CDU/CSU, SPD, and FDP into a multiparty system.

German unification in 1990 resulted in the transformation of the former SED into a postcommunist democratic party that was named the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). The PDS entered parliament as a fifth national party in 1990. In elections since 1990 the PDS polled an average of 4 percent of the popular vote compared to 7 percent for the Greens, 37 percent for the SPD, and 38 percent for the CDU/CSU.

National leaders who have played key roles in shaping postwar German political development and a domestic democratic consensus include politicians from all the major parties. Among them are Theodor Heuss (1884–1963), a member of the FDP who served as the first federal president (1949–1959); Konrad Adenauer (1876–1967), a founding member of the CDU who served as the first federal chancellor (1949–1963); Willy Brandt (1913–1992), a member of the SPD who emigrated to Scandinavia after the rise of national socialism to power in 1933 and returned to Germany at the end of the war to become an internationally respected mayor of West Berlin and later federal chancellor (1969–1974); Helmut Kohl (b. 1930), a CDU chancellor who presided over German unification in 1990; and Gerhard Schroeder (b. 1944), a member of the SPD who presided over a coalition SPD-Green government formed after national elections in 1998 and 2002.

achievements and issues

A historic achievement of postwar German politics has been the firm anchorage of the Federal Republic in the North Atlantic community. Previous regimes, from Imperial Germany through the Third Reich, had pursued a "special path" (sonderweg) of domestic development and foreign policy—with disastrous consequences for Germany and the world. Postwar anchorage in a larger community of nations has taken multiple forms, including the Federal Republic's eagerness to help launch the European integration movement in the early 1950s and its membership by the mid-1950s in NATO. Germany subsequently became a major player in both the European Union and North Atlantic security affairs. In addition, Germany's status as Europe's principal "economic locomotive" has contributed to the European Union's emergence as an important global economic actor.

A number of problems confronted contemporary Germany at the start of the twenty-first century. Although Germany is once again unified, East and West Germans have not been fully integrated in a single society. Unemployment is significantly higher and wages are lower in the eastern states than in the "old" Federal Republic. Many East Germans feel their Western "cousins" treat them as second-class citizens, and many West Germans resent the unexpectedly high cost of unification (much of it paid through tax surcharges). In the late 1990s and early 2000s Germany's economic performance faltered somewhat; its annual growth rate slowed, and unemployment increased in the country as a whole.

See also: European Union.

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M. Donald Hancock