Institutions and the Fate of Democracy: Germany and Poland in the Twentieth Century by Michael s> Bernhard (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 173 and cultural tensions. Various actors use symbols of the past to accomplish their present goals. The authorspoint out the scarcityof major theoreticalcontributionsto our understandingof the demise of Leninismand the revolutionsof i989-9I. They criticize, not without good reason, the exaggerated importance of the civil society paradigm, for example, but do not suggest any alternativetheoretical models, but instead offer more generalized explanations:'One could make a case for the primacy of the political, since many of the movement activists were motivated more by the pursuit of freedom and democracy than by economic consideration,and it was a specificallypoliticalcollapseprecipitated by the withdrawalof the Soviet guarantee, that occurred in I989' (p. I99). I would argue, rather, that it was an ideological decline -the waning of the appeal of utopianism among the elite combined with rampant cynicism which exacerbated the legitimacy crisis and led to the ultimate collapse. Students of democracy, globalization, civil society, nationalism and political ideologies will find this book extremely useful. Department of Government andPolitics VLADIMIR TISMANEANU University ofMagyland (College Park) Bernhard, Michael. Institutions andtheFateof Democracy: Germany andPolandin theTwentieth Centuy.Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA, 2005. xv + 3IO PP. Figures. Tables. Notes. Bibliography.Index. $29.95 (paperback). THE core concern of this work is to examine the problem of institutional choice and its implicationsfor the success or failure of liberal, parliamentary democracies, specificallyin relation to the turbulenthistory of Germany and Poland in the lastcentury.These countriesare featuredbecause, in particular, it is argued, they are not only geographicallycontiguous, but also affordstriking examples of democratic states that failed as well as succeeded during that era and, moreover, represent a contrasting Western and Eastern European model of democracy. Four detailed case studies are selected to test the theoretical frameworkwithin the methodology of structured,focused comparison: the Weimar Republic (I9I8-33), the Polish Second Republic (I9I8-39), the Federal Republic of Germany (I949-90) and post-Communist Poland (i989-present). Using secondary sources only, and not always the most recent, a generally competent (a number of careless factual errors notwithstanding),somewhat dry, if fluently expressed, descriptivenarrativeis presented of the extremely difficultcircumstancesin which democraticinstitutionswere created and then developed in each of these four states, emphasizing, above all, the role of presidencies,parliaments,senates, constitutions,political parties and electoral laws. However, no new facts, insightsor interpretationsare adduced. Instead, there is a restatement of salient developments with which most specialists in German and Polish history will already be familiar. Thus, as regards I74 SEER, 85, I, 2007 Germany, it is intimated that the burdensome legacy of the authoritarian Kaiserreich, the defects of the ultra-liberalConstitution of I91g, notably the emergency powers accorded the President of the Republic under Article 48 and the adoption of the system of proportionalrepresentation,together with chronic governmental instability, occasioned Weimar's eventual collapse. These were certainly pertinent and significantfactors in that tragic denouement , but so also were others, such as the devastatingconsequences of hyperinflationin the early 1920S and the Depression less than a decade later, social and confessional polarization, the mediocrity of most politicians, intellectual denunciation, the immaturity of the electorate, and the rise of Hitler's National Socialistmovement, to mention but a few. A similarcriticismmay be made of the almost exclusive stress on the admittedly serious deficiencies of interwar Poland's political structures,constitutional arrangements and electoral laws, especiallyprior to Jozef Pilsudski'sI926 coup: the challenges confronting her emanated from a broader diversity of economic, social, ethnic and international sources. The character and performance of institutional variablesconstituted,therefore,only part of an infinitelymore complex situation in both countries. Furthermore,while the Weimar Republic was indeed an incontrovertible failure, the distinct impression given here, in line with Communist and left/liberal historiography,is that the pre-war Polish Second Republic was likewise a failure. But the most recent scholarly literature, devoid of tendentiouspolitical and ideologicalperspectives,has shown that in many importantrespects the antithesiswas actually the case. The institutional and constitutional evolution of the Federal Republic of Germany in the aftermathof the ignominious defeat and discreditingof the Third Reich is delineated rather more convincingly. Constructive initiatives such as the Basic Law (Grundgesetz,1949), a strong Chancellor-basedexecutive and an electorallaw incorporatingthe crucial5 per...