West Germany and the Politics of Centrality

Abstract

WHEN MANY COUNTRIES IN WESTERN EUROPE ARE EXPERIENCING A flux or even a teeming confusion in their party systems, West Germany stands out as a case of almost aberrant cohesion. The ageold yearning for ‘the German synthesis’ finds its apparent modern fulfilment in the party system. The uncomfortable extremes of left and right have for long hovered around virtual electoral extinction, and the rise of new movements – such as forms of neo-Poujadism in Scandinavia or the rediscovery of the territorial dimension of politics as in Britain – has left the Federal Republic untouched. The two major contenders for power, the SPD and the CDU, dominate the electoral scene, and in so doing seem to be locked in an embrace from which neither is able to escape.