Report from the Laboratory: The Influence of Institutions on Political Elites' Democratic Values in Germany

Robert Rohrschneider

American Political Science Review, 1994, vol. 88, issue 4, 927-941

Abstract: The unification of Germany revives several questions about the future of Germany's democracy. Given the socialist-authoritarian background, how supportive are East Germany's elites of liberal democratic rights? Has the socialist-democratic experience instilled into elites a social egalitarian conception of democracies? In what ways, if at all, do elites support direct democracy procedures? I examine political elites' conceptions of democracies in the united Germany in 1991, using a survey of 168 parliamentarians from the united parliament in Berlin. I find that the socialist and parliamentary institutions in the East and the West, respectively, have substantially influenced elites' conceptions of democracies in Germany, leading to a value divergence across the East-West boundary. Yet the findings also suggest that a partial value convergence in terms of liberal democratic rights among postwar elites has taken place. The results support an institutional learning theory, but they also suggest that support for liberal democratic values has been diffused into East Germany.

Date: 1994
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:88:y:1994:i:04:p:927-941_09

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Political Science Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().