The present state and future prospects of the German Volksparteien

Party performance in the 1994 ‘super'‐election year led many observers to conclude that the major parties had managed to stabilise their position. However, subsequent Land elections show a continuing downward trend in their support, evident since the 1980s, and party membership is also falling. None the less, the major parties will retain their predominance at the parliamentary level in government. In consequence there is a widening gap between their control of the party state and the basis for their legitimation in society. This development may be intensified in view of the economic and social problems faced by the Federal Republic.     

The Partnership between the Czech and German Greens

The paper (1) reviews the value differences between west and east Germany after unification and their development to date, and (2) explains the fact that between 1990 and 1995 east and west Germany do not approach each other in terms of values. (1) Of the four values considered, equality is more strongly endorsed in west Germany, whilst achievement is more strongly endorsed in the east. Co‐determination finds more support in west Germany. Acceptancy of institutions differs in its two domains in opposite directions: Religiosity is more strongly supported in west Germany, morality in east Germany. Across all four values, differences between both parts of the country mostly remain constant or even grow between 1990 and 1995. (2) As the former German Democratic Republic relied heavily on ‘work’ as an integrative ideology, east Germans should still be able to create a feeling of togetherness today based on the work product they established under the GDR. On the other hand, as this work is no longer linked to an unjust and ineffective political and economic system, it retrospectively gains in value on the one hand. Yet, as it is inevitably poorly assessed in the economic reconstruction of east Germany, it continually loses its value on the other hand. As unification has set off these contradicting developments, east Germans attribute them to west Germany; hence their growing distance from west German values.     

The beginnings of a feminist consciousness: A review essay

Abstract

“Leaf abscission” is a term used by American military men to designate their chemical war in Viet Nam. The term like its sister word “defoliation,” is meant to suggest that the dumping of herbicides and other chemicals over a tiny piece of land that has also been the victim of the most intense bombing in world history has helped to thin out a few troublesome trees and shrubs while causing no significant damage to anything else at all. On the contrary, the use of herbicides and other chemicals sprayed by the American military in Viet Nam has already caused untold misery to thousands of innocent civilians.     

The diplomacy of German unification

Heinrich Bortfeldt, Washington ‐ Bonn ‐ Berlin (Bonn: Bouvier, 1993)

Elizabeth Pond, Beyond the Wall (Washington: Brookings, 1993)

Stephen Szabo, The Diplomacy of German Unification (New York: St Martin's, 1993).     

The PDS in the new German party system

The success of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) cannot be explained solely with a rising tide of GDR nostalgia and/or with the efficiency of PDS members as service providers and advocates at the grass‐roots level. We stress the importance of the PDS as the main political representative of a specific socio‐economic and cultural milie in the former GDR. Furthermore, the article traces the evolution of the PDS from a populist voice of protest of the losers of unification to the beginnings of a new political party. As such it defines its identity more as a radical left‐wing party with strong social libertarian characteristics than a traditional socialist party. The party programme and the electorate of the PDS display remarkable similarities to the fundamentalist wing of the West German Greens in the 1980s, although differences as to the origins of the left‐libertarian ideas remain important. While the PDS seems to have strengthened the significance of the new politics agenda in post‐unification Germany, it is still too early to conclude whether this agenda is firmly rooted in the party or whether it is simply a vehicle to electoral success.     

Sisterhood is local: The rise of feminist journals in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Whether as central members in their own households, as workers in the formal or informal economy, as political figures or as performers and artists, Southeast Asian women have contributed and continue to contribute to the economic, social, and artistic development of their societies. Yet it is only recently that we have begun to look at their lives separately from—yet vital to our understanding of—those societies and their histories. Over the past twenty years publications about Southeast Asian women have grown both in number and scope. Since 1991, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has added some six hundred new titles about Southeast Asian women to its collection—double the number it acquired in the years 1981 to 1985 and thirty percent more than in the previous five-year period (1986–1990). More impressive than the sheer number of publications is the scope of issues being addressed. Many topics such as prostitution, domestic abuse, or women factory workers were inconceivable just ten years ago. But the most notable and positive change over the past twenty years has been the growth of publishing by the women of Southeast Asia. Women's publishing, especially feminist publishing, is best illustrated by the rise of feminist periodicals and newsletters that serve to unite women. The myriad of voices found in these periodicals are those of women who speak different languages and who come from vastly different economic backgrounds. We talk about the emerging global village, but these periodicals demonstrate that sisterhood may indeed be more local than global.     

The New German party finance law

In 1992 the Federal Constitutional Court decided for the sixth time since 1949 that the German legislation concerning political finance was unconstitutional. While the first five cases were important milestones in the development of German law on the public funding of parties and campaigns, this decision was notable for its rejection of key provisions of two laws that were passed in the 1980s and for overturning the Court's previous ban on direct aid to the parties. A commission of experts was formed to study and recommend changes, and a new law was passed by the Bundestag and Bundesrat in November and December 1993. Instead of focusing on reimbursements of parties for their campaign expenditures, the new law provides for direct financing of parties based on one DM for each vote in EU, national, and Land elections and DM .50 for each D‐Mark received in party dues and donations up to DM 6,000 per person (12,000 per couple). For the first five million votes, the parties receive DM 1.30 per vote. To encourage citizen involvement, parties are not to receive more than the sum of all of their own source revenues, and the total support for all parties is not to exceed the DM 230 million (adjusted for inflation) that was given to the parties as reimbursements for campaign expenditures in the period 1989–1992. To those who have followed the controversies over German political financing since the 1950s, it will be no surprise to learn that the new legislation has provoked criticism and sparked plans to bring the new law before the Federal Constitutional Court.     

Lean production and the German model

Traditionally the German employment system has been hailed as the surpreme example of how a symbiosis between equity and efficiency can be established in an economic system. A defining characteristic of the German employment system is how the world of work is embedded in a highly co‐ordinated system of industrial relations institutions inside and outside the enterprise. The argument of this paper is that this model of labour market organisation is coming under severe pressure as a result of a range of developments, not least the emergence of lean production as a credible alternative system of work organisation. Lean production which is based on techniques moulded and fine‐tuned in Japan affronts virtually every aspect of the prevailing model of economic citizenship in Germany. It is argued that important modifications will have to be made to key industrial relations institutions in the country so that enterprises can respond effectively to the lean production challenge.     

The neoliberal state and the penalization of misery

The strategy adopted by the neoliberal state to maintain social order and safeguard private property in a context of economic deregulation and social precariousness has destroyed the welfare state and aggravated poverty, depriving the masses of any form of social protection while subjecting them to repression. The reinforcement of the repressive state apparatus is associated with the social instability provoked by the lack of social policies, the degradation of living conditions for the great majority of the population, and the amplification of income and property inequalities both in the so-called capitalist periphery and in the richest industrialized countries. The penalization of misery is revealed as a new expression of class domination.     

Feminist Reading(s) and reading into feminist theory

Abstract

Let me confess in the beginning that I am a latecomer to the field of feminist literary criticism. Having left academia (or, more accurately, never really becoming part of it-the position I got two years after receiving my Ph.D. was one of raising two children), I was introduced to feminist criticism in the mid-1980s, a few years after I wrote the introduction to This Kind of Woman on which the review “Reading Women's Texts” concentrates. I have found feminist literary criticism intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying. I found the intellectual stimulation similar to what I had experienced after being introduced to the theories of Freud and Erikson. Indeed, my basic framework for understanding human behavior is colored by those theories I have learned earlier. I am quite willing, however, to apply new theories that would work against the old ones as long as such applications open up new terrain in literary interpretation. On the other hand, it is not a good practice with literary criticism to place a theory ahead of works and to try to force a theoretical position on them. In this response to the review I will therefore try to defend my position without rejecting the notion that there are new worthwhile readings of the stories, that is, that some corrections and modifications of the original reading may be possible and desirable.