Preparing the stages for popular deliberation. Political parties, voters and extra-parliamentary communication in West Germany and Europe, 1940s–70s

Abstract

ABSTRACT What constituted appropriate rules of political conduct and debate was a fairly essential question for the liberal democracies of post-war Europe which had witnessed the refusal of deliberation as a political principle and practice under Fascism. Old and new political elites needed to re-define the prerequisites of what was to be seen as serious political negotiation, especially in public meetings. In doing so, agents of party democracy also decided who should gain access to the political arena and what manners were perceived as appropriate for political communication. As a result, however, democratic principles were routinely challenged. This article investigates how rules of good debate set by agents of party democracy shaped political communication with ‘the people’ and excluded a good part of the voters from speaking and acting on the public stages after 1945. Comparing direct political communication in the Federal Republic and other West European democracies into the 1970s, it reconstructs how the breaking of those rules by extra-parliamentary activists, along with other factors, could open up the stages for ordinary voters. The article eventually discusses why the rise of popular deliberation in political communication around 1970 seemed to be a peculiarity of the post-Nazi setting of West Germany.