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The Cumbersome Way to Partisan Orientation in a 'New' Democracy: the Case of the Former GDR1

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The Cumbersome Way to Partisan Orientation in a 'New' Democracy: the Case of the Former GDR1 Veröffentlichungsreihe der Abteilung Institutionen und sozialer Wandel des Forschungsschwerpunkts Sozialer Wandel, Institutionen und Vermittlungsprozesse des Wissenschaftszentrums Berlin für Sozialforschung FS m 93-201 The Cumbersome Way to Partisan Orientation in a 'New' Democracy: The Case of the Former GDR1 Max Kaase Hans-Dieter Klingemann Berlin, Februar 1993 Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung gGmbH (WZB) Reichpietschufer 50, D-1000 Berlin 30, Telefon (030) 25 49 1-0 Zusammenfassung Die Entwicklung von Parteiorientierung kann in den neu entstehenden Demokratien Osteuropas heute besonders gut studiert werden. Die ehemalige DDR ist dabei als Sonderfall zu betrachten. Hier wurde, von kleineren Ausnahmen abgesehen, durch den Beitritt zur Bundesrepublik auch das westdeutsche Parteiensystem übernommen. Wie ist die Qualität der Parteiorientierung der ostdeutschen Wählerschaft zu beurteilen? Anhand von Umfragedaten aus den Jahren 1990 bis 1992 wird ein hoher Grad an Ähnlichkeit der Parteiorientierung zwischen der ostdeutschen und der westdeutschen Bevölkerung nachgewiesen. Unterschiedlich ist allerdings der Anteil der Befragten, die meinten, sie neigten einer politischen Partei zu. Er war in der ostdeutschen Wählerschaft etwa 10 Prozentpunkte niedriger als in der westdeutschen Wählerschaft. Ähnliches gilt für die Bereitschaft oder Fähigkeit, die positiven und negativen Seiten der fünf wesentlichen Parteien zu diskutieren (SPD, CDU, FDP, Bündnis 90/Grüne, PDS). Aber auch hier überrascht die hohe Ähnlichkeit der Inhalte der Vorstellungsbilder zwischen Ost und West. Plausibilität gewinnen die Ergebnisse vor dem Hintergrund, daß die Ostdeutschen, insbesondere durch das westdeutsche Radio- und Fernsehprogramm, aber auch durch sonstige Kontakte mit Westdeutschen, gut über die Parteien in der Bundesrepublik informiert waren. Abstract The development of democracies in East Europe offers a unique opportunity to study the emergence of party orientation. The former GDR, however, must be regarded as a special case. By becoming a member of the Federal Republic of Germany the GDR also took over the West German party system - disregarding a few particularities. What is the state of party orientation of the East German electorate? Surveys from 1990 to 1992 show a high degree of similarity in party orientation of the East and West German electorate. There is, however, a difference regarding the proportion of respondents who think of themselves as partisans. This proportion is about ten per cent points lower in the East. The same applies to the willingness or capacity of East Germans to discuss positive and negative aspects of the five major political parties (SPD, CDU, FDP, Bündnis 90/Grüne, PDS). However, the high degree of similarity of image elements comes again as a surprise. The fact that East Germans were able to listen to West German radio and watch West German television, in addition to many other contacts between East and West Germans which were possible for a long time, is offered as a possible explanation. 1. Prolegomenon Political parties in Western Europe have traditionally been strong actors in the democratic political process. Historically, they assumed their importance in the context of political mass mobilization, the establishment of general suffrage and the institutionalization of so­ cial cleavage systems which have characterized the European polities throughout the 20th century. The linkages parties provided between individual citizens and the world of poli­ tics were firmly rooted in intermediary structures such as trade unions, and were buffered by social milieus which, through various channels, integrated the citizens in an overarching system of political beliefs. These beliefs are quite rightfully named "political ideology", a term coined to indicate the extent to which all elements of political world-events, issues, politicians and corporate political actors - were seen and evaluated through a common ideational yardstick (Fuchs and Klingemann 1990). The transformation of the European polities from pre-democratic authoritarian regimes to democratic welfare states was a slow process. For instance, the establishment of general suffrage lasted at least until the Nineteen Twenties and was not completed - with the ex­ ception of Switzerland in 1970 - until the middle of this century. The time span of both this process and the linkage of political and social organizations through institutionalized conflict structures probably were the most important reasons why Lipset and Rokkan (1967) in the mid-sixties could still rightfully speak of frozen party systems in Western Eu­ rope. Keeping this gross scenario in mind, it cannot come as a surprise that Paul F. Lazarsfeld as an European refugee looked at American elections with a perspective which, when trying to understand the determinants of individual voting behavior, emphasized the links between political parties and social groups (Lazarsfeld et al. 1944; Berelson et al. 1954). By now, it is part of the common heritage in political sociology that Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes in many publications starting in the late Fourties began to challenge the validity of the "European" socio-structural vo­ ting model for the US. In time, they successfully replaced it with a more political approach looking at issues, candidates and, in particular, partisan orientations as those factors which were most relevant in understanding US voting behavior. The impact of macro-political thinking by V.O. Key (1955) on the Michigan group has surfaced very clearly in a piece by Angus Campbell (1966) published in the second large 1 The authors appreciate the technical support by Jürgen Hamberger, Bärbel Hoop, Jeffrey Huffman and Martin Koczor in preparing the charts in this chapter. 2 Max Kaase/Hans-Dieter Klingemann volume by that group (Campbell et al. 1966). The classification of elections derived from the dimensions of voting behavior and of party identification pointed to the 1932 and 1936 New Deal presidential elections as those where party identification, for the last time in the 20th century, was substantially changed in order to remain, for a period of thirty years or so, consistently biased in favor of the Democrats: it had been a realigning election. Of course, this approach at typologizing elections required the existence of a given party system for a substantial period of time before and after such specific elections. In addi­ tion, the overall institutional framework of the US as a presidential system, plus its histori­ cal roots have to be kept in mind in order to avoid unreflected transfer of such concepts as critical elections to other polities operating under very different institutional conditions. Nevertheless, these concepts automatically come to mind when discussing the situation of the East European polities which are on their way to democratization, have all had at least one or more free general elections, and, in this context, are beginning to set up party sy­ stems as core elements of their emerging institutional settings. Many young European political scientists experienced a great deal of enthusiasm and intellectual stimulation in the Sixties when they assembled at the Mecca of electoral so­ ciology in the US, the Survey Research Center of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (later to become even better known under the new label of the Center for Political Studies). One consequence of these intellectual encounters were broad, if not always tremendously successful efforts to export core concepts of the analytical approach of the Michigan group to Europe, in particular the concept of party identification (for a documentation of such and related efforts see Budge, Crewe and Farlie 1976). In the (West) German case, these efforts for one finally resulted in the development of a functionally equivalent indicator for party identification. Since the late Sixties there has been an ongoing debate in Germany on the uses of the party identification concept for political analysis in the Federal Republic. One of the advantages of this debate has been the regular availability of data on various dimensions of partisanship. Usually, three such measurements are taken: vote intention (a question simulating a general election coming up next Sunday), a ranking of the major parties, and party identification (including an in­ tensity measure for those who identify with a given party). Since early 1990 much of this information is also available for the GDR resp., after unification, for the five new Länder (states). Another consequence of the Ann Arbor encounter has been the export of the concept of the party image. Not so easy to handle in both measurement and data analysis this ap­ proach to understand attitudes towards political parties has become less widespread. Ho­ wever, systematic data gathering has taken place in West Germany in pre-election surveys since 1969. In 1990 this type of data has been collected for East Germany as well. We Partisan Orientation in a 'New'Democracy 3 shall also make use of this unique data-base for our analysis. Party images consist of cha­ racteristics people associate with political parties. Among the core image elements are be­ liefs about a party's ideological or policy position, group ties, its performance in govern­ ment or opposition, and the efficiency and morality of its politicians. It is our key assump­ tion that partisan attitudes which are reflected in
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