Abstract
The newcomers to the Federal Republic of Germany, the Ausländer, have slowly made their mark on their adopted society, beginning with their contributions to the economy and expanding gradually to the cuisine, the urban landscape, and even the literary and cinematic scene. It was only a matter of time before they would become a presence—if a largely mute one—in the rough and tumble of politics and even in the saturnine world of political theory. And so it has come to pass. Today, those who concern themselves with the theory and practice of German politics can, in their pleas, proposals, critiques, and apologia, no longer avoid the challenge posed by the presence of ethnic and cultural plurality in the bosom of the body politic. Politicians and pundits alike have been obliged to confront the problems posed by diversity and to integrate their responses into their broader political perspectives and platforms.
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Notes
1. In describing how Kant came to use the new expression Republikanismus, Reinhart Koselleck writes, “Republicanism indicated a principle of historical movement whose promotion was a political and moral imperative. … It served to anticipate the forthcoming historical movement and to influence it in practice.” “Time and Revolutionary Language,” in Reiner Schürmann, ed., The Public Realm: Essays on Discursive Types in Political Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), 300.
2. Jürgen Habermas, “Three Normative Models of Democracy,” in Seyla Benhabib, ed., Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 23–4. The italics are his.
3. Dieter Oberndörfer, “Integration oder Abschottung? Auf dem Weg zur postnationalen Republik,” Zeitschrift für Ausländerrecht und Ausländerpolitik 18 (1998), 3–4.
4. Particularly helpful on this topic is Wolfgang Mager, “Republik,” in Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1984), vol. 5, 549–651.
6. Influential tropes in this tradition, which traces much of its inspiration to the Hellenistic polis, present the republic in organistic terms or using the image of the body. For a contemporary examination of the notion of structural ethics, see Louis Dupré and William O’Neill, “Social Structures and Structural Ethics,” The Review of Politics 51 (1989), 327–44.
8. Republican devotees of social renovation differ further among themselves as to whether the requisite changes are to be attained through reform (as Kant thought possible) or revolution (as Jefferson thought necessary).
9. A testament to the inclusivist implications of this idea was the extremely liberal naturalization policy envisioned by the Jacobins, under which employed males over the age of twenty-one became eligible for citizenship after only one year of residence in France. A contemporary example of inclusive republicanism from the American context is Frank Michelman, “Law’s Republic,” Yale Law Journal 97 (1988), 1493–537. For an Australian counterpart, see Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
10. While the former perspective is deeply Aristotelian, the pedigree of the latter includes the later Stoa. The cosmopolitan approach has, at various points—for example, in Wolff’s conception of a civitas maxima—oriented itself toward a telos that takes the form of a world republic. See Nicholas Greenwood Onuf, “Imagined Republics,” Alternatives 19 (1994), 321.
11. Peter Blickle, “Kommunalismus und Republikanismus in Oberdeutschland,” in Helmut G. Königsberger, ed., Republiken and Republikanismus im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit (München: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1988), 57–75. This tradition is still maintained, in part, in the lore of the Freistaat Bavaria.
12. The analytical approach contrasting French and German modes of political organization pioneered by Friedrich Meinecke in his Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat (München: R. Oldenbourg, 1907) has been updated in Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992). Brubaker has recently been accused, however, of exaggerating the differences between the two. See Adrian Favell, Philosophies of Integration: Immigration and the Idea of Citizenship in France and Britain (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 43–6.
13. See especially “Zum ewigen Frieden” (1795), Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 8 (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1912), 341–86; but also “Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis” (1793), GS 8, 273–313; and “Der Streit der Facultäten” (1798), GS 7, 1–116.
14. Kant calls the idea of a global republic “in thesi richtig” (“Zum ewigen Frieden,” 357), but recognizes substantial obstacles to the realization of what he elsewhere calls a Platonic ideal, the “res publica noumenon” (“Streit der Facultäten,” 91). See also Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, “Kant’s Idea of Peace and the Philosophical Conception of a World Republic,” in James Bohman and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, eds., Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), 59–77.
15. “Versuch über den Begriff des Republikanismus” (1796), in Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, vol. 7, Ernst Behler, ed. (Munich: Ferdinand Schoeningh, 1966), 11–25.
16. Although the connection is not difficult to establish in many of Kant’s contemporaries, whether or not or to what extent Kant subscribed to a teleological view remains a vexed question. See, e.g., Martha Nussbaum, “Kant and Cosmopolitanism,” in Bohman and Lutz-Bachmann, Perpetual Peace, 25–57.
17. An account emphasizing the indigenous and other non-French sources of German republicanism at the turn of the nineteenth century is Renate Dopheide, Republikanismus in Deutschland: Studie zur Theorie der Republik in der deutschen Publizistik des späten 18. Jahrhunderts (Bochum: Ruhr-Universität, 1980). On the interplay of nationalist and constitutional ideas during the ensuing decades, see Reinhard Blänkner, “Die Idee der Verfassung in der politischen Kultur des 19. Jahrhunderts in Deutschland,” in Herfried Münkler, ed., Bürgerreligion und Bürgertugend: Debatten über die vorpolitischen Grundlagen politischer Ordnung (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1996), 309–41. For an overview, see Hans Renk, Der republikanische Gedanke in der deutschen Geschichte (Jena: Zwing, 1930).
20. See, e.g., Ernst Cassirer, Die Idee der republikanischen Verfassung: Rede zur Verfassungsfeier 1928 (Hamburg: Friederichsen Verlag, 1929).
21. Josef Isensee, “Republik—Sinnpotential eines Begriffs,” Juristenzeitung 36 (1981), 1–8, at 7.
22. For an influential discussion of the contemporary relevance of republican ideas in the German milieu, see Herfried Münkler, “Politische Tugend: Bedarf die Demokratie einer sozio-moralischen Grundlegung?” in Herfried Münkler, ed., Die Chancen der Freiheit: Grundprobleme der Demokratie (München: Piper Verlag, 1992), 25–47. On communitarianism, see Axel Honneth, ed., Kommunitarismus: Eine Debatte über die moralischen Grundlagen moderner Gesellschafien (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1993); Michael J. Sandel, Liberalismus oder Republikanismus: Von der Notwendigkeit der Bürgertugend (Vienna: Passagen Verlag, 1995); Winfried Brugger, “Kommunitarismus als Verfassungstheorie des Grundgesetzes,” Archiv des öffentlichen Rechts 123 (1998), 337–74.
23. This is the strategy of Michael Walzer in Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 31–63.
24. On the vicissitudes of this dynamic in France and the United States, see Peter Riesenberg, Citizenship in the Western Tradition: Plato to Rousseau (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1992), 267–73.
25. On how this process has occurred, see for example Klaus J. Bade, “Immigration and Social Peace in United Germany,” Daedalus 123 (1994), 85–106; Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Thomas Schmid, Heimat Babylon: Das Wagnis der multikulturellen Demokratie (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe Verlag, 1992), 116–75; and Michelle Mattson, “Refugees in Germany: Invasion or Invention?” New German Critique 64 (1995), 61–85.
27. For a detailed discussion of these conceptions, see my Ethics of Citizenship: Immigration and Group Rights in Germany (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 72–111. For an in some ways comparable analysis carried out in terms of “ideologies,” see Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
28. Kenneth L. Karst, Belonging to America: Equal Citizenship and the Constitution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
29. One well-developed version of this theory is Veit Bader, “The Cultural Conditions of Transnational Citizenship: On the Interpenetration of Political and Ethnic Cultures,” Political Theory 25 (1997), 771–813. See also Maurizio Viroli, For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).
30. I discuss this case more fully in “Group Rights and the Muslim Diaspora,” Human Rights Quarterly 21 (1999), 907–26; see also Katherine Pratt Ewing, “Legislating Religious Freedom: Muslim Challenges to the Relationship between ‘Church’ and ‘State’ in Germany and France,” Daedalus 129 (2000), 31–54. On the related issue of crucifixes in public schools, see Rainer Forst’s essay in this volume, and Winfried Brugger and Stefan Huster, eds., Der Streit um das Kreuz in der Schule: Zur religiös-weltanschaulichen Neutralitat des Staates (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1998).
31. Zuwanderunggestalten, Integration fördern: Bericht der Unabhängigen Kommission “Zuwanderung” (Berlin: Bundesministerium des Innern, 2001), 245–9. The so-called option model included in the 1999 citizenship law, which establishes the norm that children receiving dual citizenship must relinquish one by the age of twenty-three, is laid out in Bundestags-Drucksache 14/533. For some assessments by leading jurists, see Zeitschreft für Ausläderrecht und Ausländerpolitik 19 (1999), 98, 147.
32. The connection between admission to citizenship and consent is explored in Peter H. Schuck and Rogers M. Smith, Citizenship without Consent: Illegal Aliens in the American Polity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).
33. For a strong defense of dual citizenship along these lines, see Ruth Rubio Marin, Immigration as a Democratic Challenge: Citizenship and Inclusion in Germany and the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
35. Konrad Low, “Was bedeutet ‘Republik’ in der Bezeichnung ‘Bundesrepublik Deutschland’?” Die Öffentliche Verwaltung 22 (1979), 819–22.
36. Wilhelm Henke, “Die Republik,” in Josef Isensee and Paul Kirchhof, eds., Handbuch des Staatsrechts der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, vol. 1, (Heidelberg: C. F. Muller Juristischer Verlag, 1987), 863–86, quoted in Lutz Hoffmann, Dieunvollendete Republik: Zwischen Einwanderungsland und deutschem Nationalstaat (Cologne: PapyRossa, 1990), 128.
37. Klaus-Berto von Dömming, Rudolf Werner Füsslein, and Werner Matz, “Entstehungsgeschichte der Artikel des Grundgesetzes,” Jahrbuch des Öffentlichen Rechts der Gegenwart 1 (1951), 16–20.
38. As Josef Isensee notes, “Unter der Asche des gegenwärtigen Republikverständnisses glimmt eine Traditionsglut, die jederzeit Flamme werden kann” (“Sinnpotential eines Begriffs,” 3). See also Dieter Langewiesche, Republik und Republikaner: Von der historischen Entwertung eines politischen Begriffs (Essen: Klartext-Verlag, 1993).
39. Representative portrayals are Thomas Assheuer, “Das Deutschlandspiel—Viel Abschied, wenig Ankunft—Der Streit um die Deutung einer Berliner Republik,” Die Zeit, September 3, 1998; and Klaus Hartung, “Aufbruch ins Zentrum—Berlin ist nicht das Symbol der Vereinigungsmisere, sondern das Ort eines neuen Anfangs,” Die Zeit, September 10, 1998.
40. Jürgen Habermas, “1989 im Schatten von 1945: Zum Normalität einer künftigen Berliner Republik,” in Die Normalität einer Berliner Republik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1995), 170.
41. See, e.g., Manfred Behrend and Monika Prenzel, Die Republikaner: Neue Rechte oder 1000 Jahre und kein Ende (Berlin: Urania-Verlag, 1990); Claus Leggewie, Die Republikaner, 3rd. ed. (Berlin: Rotbuch-Verlag, 1989); Bernhard Schelenz, Der politische Sprachgebrauch der “Republikaner” (Frankfurt: Lang, 1992).
42. Hans-Georg Betz, Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe (London: Macmillan, 1994), 183. On the roots of this attitude toward national cultures in Herder’s thought, see Louis Dumont, Essays on Individualism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 113–32.
43. Cf. the partially overlapping distinction, made in reference to the North American debate, between “substantial communitarianism” and “republican communitarianism” in Rainer Forst, Kontexte der Gerechtigkeit: Politische Philosophie jenseits von Liberalismus und Kommunitarismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1996), 161–77.
44. Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).
45. Witness the recent highly charged public exchange about the importance of maintaining a Leitkultur in the face of immigration; see, e.g., Gustav Seibt, “Kein schöner Land,” Die Zeit 45/2000.
46. Thus Habermas, who elsewhere endorses a neo-Kantian version of republicanism, criticizes a republicanism he portrays in communitarian terms in “Three Normative Models of Democracy.” Other presentations of republicanism as a foil are Hauke Brunkhorst, Demokratie und Differenz: Vom klassischen zum modernen Begriff des Politischen (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1994), 97–132; Axel Honneth, “Democracy as Reflexive Cooperation: John Dewey and the Theory of Democracy Today,” Political Theory 26 (1998), 763–83; and Walter Reese-Schafer, Grenzgötter der Moral: Der neuere europäisch-amerikanische Diskurs zur politischen Ethik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997), 323–61.
47. Dolf Sternberger, “Verfassungspatriotismus: Rede bei der 25-Jahr-Feier der ‘Akademie für Politische Bildung”’ [1982] in Schriften 10 (Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1990), 17–31.
48. Oberndörfer, “Integration oder Abschottung,” 3. For other statements of his position, see Dieter Oberndörfer, Die offene Republik: Zur Zukunft Deutschlands und Europas (Freiburg: Herder, 1991); and Dieter Oberndörfer, Der Wahn des Nationalen: Die Alternative der offenen Republik (Freiburg: Herder, 1993).
50. In his translated work, the terms are rendered with “morality” and “ethics.” See Jürgen Habermas, “Inklusion—Einbeziehen oder Einschliessen? Zum Verhältnis von Nation, Rechtsstaat und Demokratie,” in Die Einbeziehung des Anderen, 172–173; “Struggles for Recognition in the Democratic Constitutional State,” in Charles Taylor et al., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 122–8; and “Three Normative Models,” 23–24.
53. See, e.g., Hoffmann, Die unvollendete Republik, 157; Habermas, “Zur Legitimation durch Menschenrechte,” in Die postnationale Konstellation: Politische Essays (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1998), 189–90.
55. Habermas, “Inklusion,” 168; Oberndörfer, “Integration oder Abschottung?” 13, n. 32.
56. Jürgen Habermas, “Citizenship and National Identity: Some Reflections on the Future of Europe,” in Ronald Beiner, ed., Theorizing Citizenship (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 279; Antje Wiener, “European” Citizenship Practice: Building Institutions of a Non-State (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1998).
57. Jürgen Habermas, “Der europäische Nationalstaat—Zu Vergangenheit und Zukunft von Souveränität und Staatsbürgerschaft,” in Die Einbeziehung des Anderen, 142.
58. See for example Claus Offe and Ulrich K. Preuss, “Democratic Institutions and Moral Resources,” in David Held, ed., Political Theory Today (Oxford: Polity Press, 1991), 143–71.
59. The phrase appears in a number of Habermas’ writings. See, e.g., “Braucht Europa eine Verfassung? Eine Bemerkung zu Dieter Grimm,” in Die Einbeziehung des Anderen, 189.
60. Jürgen Habermas, “Die postnationale Konstellation und die Zukunft der Demokratie,” in Die postnationale Konstellation, 114. For a thoroughgoing reflection on the program of democratization implied by Habermas’ interpretation of republicanism, see Rainer Schmalz-Bruns, Reflexive Demokratie: Die demokratische Transformation moderner Politik (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1995).
61. Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, “Die Nation,” Frankfürter Allgemeine Zeitung September 30, 1995; Ralf Dahrendorf, “Die Zukunft des Nationalstaates,” Merkur 48 (1994), 757–8.
63. Charles Taylor, “Die Motive einer Verfahrensethik,” in Wolfgang Kuhlmann, ed., Moralität und Sittlichkeit: Das Problem Hegels und die Diskursethik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986), 101–35; Alasdair Maclntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 326–48.
64. For an intriguing attempt to synthesize the perspectives of methodological individualism and methodological holism in an account integrating individual, interpersonal, and social ethics, see Christian Kissling, Gemeinwohl und Gerechtigkeit: Ein Vergleich von traditioneller Naturrechtsethik und kritischer Gesellschaftstheorie (Freiburg: Herder, 1993).
65. Oberndörfer, “Integration oder Abschottung?” 7; Claus Offe, “‘Homogeneity’ and Constitutional Democracy: Coping with Identity Conflicts through Group Rights,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 6 (1998), 113–41; Habermas, “Struggles for Recognition,” 130–32. In more recent writings, however, Habermas has shown a greater openness to various sorts of group rights. See, e.g., “Inklusion,” 174.
66. Such an approach would mirror a similar development in discourse concerning the related notion of the common good, observable above all in Catholic social thought over the last two decades. See Otfried Höffe, Vernunft und Recht: Bausteine zu einem interkulturellen Rechtsdiskurs (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1996), 220–39.
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Barbieri, W.A. (2003). The Many Faces of the Republic: Or, What’s in a Name?. In: Müller, JW. (eds) German Ideologies Since 1945: Studies in the Political Thought and Culture of the Bonn Republic. Europe In Transition: The NYU European Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982544_12
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