Hastily Arranged Marriage: Political Attitudes and Perceptions in Germany 20 Years after the Unification
Abstract
Explanations for the roots and cures of the continuous divergence between East and West German political cultures tend to fall into two camps: ‘socialization’ and ‘situation’. The article argues that in order to explain the persistence and reinvigoration of an autonomous political culture during the last two decades in the new Länder, we need to synthesize the two approaches and to add a third aspect: the ‘unification’ hypothesis.
Although the communist period brought about a specific political culture in the GDR, the German unification process – based rather on ‘transplantation’ than on ‘adaptation’ – has caused it neither to diminish nor to wither away. On the contrary, the separate (post)-communist political culture was reaffirmed and reinstalled under novel circumstances.