Restoration and Stability: The Creation of a Stable Democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany

Abstract

The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) has come to be as indelibly associated with stability as Weimar was with crisis, and its government coalitions have been some of the most stable and enduring in Europe. Until 1966 every government lasted its full term. In stark contrast to the inter-war period, the occasions where coalitions have spent their life clinging to survival by a hair’s breadth have been few indeed. Even when governments changed — as in 1966/69 and 1982 — the political agenda evinced remarkable continuity. This is partly because the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) has been in government for almost three-quarters of the FRG’s existence, but also because after 1949 the polarization of Weimar politics gave way very rapidly to a different scenario: extreme parties disappeared from the political scene, and constitutional parties came increasingly to share the same centre ground. Politics itself had moved off the street; the tumult and protests of Weimar were replaced by orderly parliamentary politics. Class conflict was regulated within the institutional confines of the new state, and after 1951 neither employers nor unions attempted seriously to challenge that framework. From the FRG’s inception the number of strikes remained low. In the era of full employment in the late 1950s and 1960s strikes were generally well below even the depressed level to which union activity had sunk in the 1930s as a result of the massive demoralization and unemployment produced by the slump.