An Old People in a New State: The Problem of National Integration in West Germany

Abstract

A central issue in political development has been the role of national integration. Here, the developmental process is specified theoretically as depending, in part, upon individuals and groups transferring subjective identification and loyalty from subcultural objects to political institutions at the level of the nation-state.' National integration, thus, is seen as necessary to ensure the legitimacy and effectiveness of regimes grappling with the problems of modernization. While this description of the developmental process is most commonly used to interpret the experiences of countries in the so-called Third World, it invites comparison with the historical development of western industrialized societies. For these countries, we may expect that the process of national integration is reasonably complete, providing sufficient popular support for the institutions of these regimes to ensure their stability. Given this perspective, sporadic challenges to regime legitimacy in western societies are often regarded as deviant cases. In contrast to many other western nation-states, the period of German history from unification through World War II appears to offer an example running counter to expectations associated with development theory. While a perception of German nationality appears to have been well-established and longstanding among the German people, their modern history has not produced a corresponding set of stable political institutions upon which their loyalty could be confidently projected.2 The German Empire, the Weimar Republic, and the Third Reich have presented Germans with an array of political structures which, after a quite modest time period, were demonstrated by events not to have merited such loyalty and confidence as they might have commanded. With the establishment of the Federal Republic, we have a particularly appropriate site in which to conduct a hard test of the developmental expectation that a culturally united people will project identification and loyalty upon political institutions which centralize authority. Not only must this process contend with the established pattern of regime instability noted above, it must also surmount the opportunities the federal structure offers West Germans to project identification and loyalty upon regional and localized political institutions and structures. From a developmental perspective, then, our question is whether Germans will choose to identify themselves with national political institutions or whether they will express themselves politically through subnational political structures.