Gabriele Metzler. Konzeptionen politischen Handelns von Adenauer bis Brandt: Politische Planung in der pluralistischen Gesellschaft. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2005. 478 S. EUR 67.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-506-71737-5.
Reviewed by Ulf Zimmermann (Department of Political Science and International Affairs, Kennesaw State University)
Published on H-German (November, 2006)
Political Transformations in Parliamentary Democracy
In this volume, Gabriele Metzler offers a sweeping panorama of the postwar development and maturation of German politics. She presents this well-nigh revolutionary process in four major sections: In the first section, "The Reassessment of the Political Arena," she addresses how the political arena changed towards the end of the 1950s; in the next section, "Research, Politics, and the Politics of Research," she deals with the deployment of scientific knowledge in politics, with an emphasis on federal statistics, a commensurate Entideologisierung and the primacy of rationality. Coming out of this material, in the third section, "The Road to Regime Change," Metzler assesses the ongoing discourse of modernization and democratization, with all the dissonances between mere routine reforms and the New Left's demands for more systemic change. This discourse, in turn, led not merely to new political leadership but also to a new form of regime, as she documents in the last section, "Modernization as Policy," which is concerned with progressive democratization.
The social sciences had arisen, in part, to deal with politics and the state, she reminds us, and the state naturally influenced these sciences by its use of them. The rise of sociology, especially as shaped by a new generation that included those, who like Ralf Dahrendorf, had learned from the Americans, turned away from the old normative to new empirical approaches and shed outmoded concepts like the "masses," which had been rendered meaningless by the emerging "affluent society." In politics proper she highlights Karl Schiller, scientist (well, economist) and politician, as the leading force that persuaded the Social Democrats to think not in terms of the working masses but of a pluralistic society and economy, following a more egalitarian principle.
During the period Metzler covers it became acceptable for the government to "plan" again, as the concept gradually lost its exclusive association with "socialist planning," and with the emphasis on this egalitarian principle the new planning was to be a more participatory process. An egalitarian principle and a participatory process of course also required a new view of public administration. According to Metzler, administrators could no longer view themselves as "rulers" but had to learn, instead, to administer policies while protecting people's rights.
One of the arenas most affected by this new view, underpinned by the increasing use of the social sciences in politics, was education, which was increasingly made more widely accessible precisely in order to enable the desired participation. As Metzler reminds us, Dahrendorf had referred to American sociology as "applied Enlightenment," and with its influence "rationality" began to displace "ideology," much as a more pluralistic view of society had displaced the outworn concept of "the masses" in Germany.
Metzler lucidly outlines how the resulting effort at rational planning led to attempts to reform government budgeting and finance, the federal system and the administration. The goals of these reforms included aiming for full employment; measured growth; currency stability; social stability; a federal system more of an American-style "cooperative" federalism, in this case with more national attention to education; and administration with more emphasis on performance than "sovereign authority." Such reforms had been discussed, with even intellectuals and literati beginning to engage in political debate, in the early 1960s. She rightly identifies the Spiegel scandal of 1962 as the catalyst that drew more people into political engagement and toward regime change, as political participation rose from below 30 to nearly 50 percent over the course of the decade.
This increased engagement proceeded as Adenauer faded away and it became clear just how much of a "chancellor democracy," top-down in structure and style, his regime had been. Such recognitions prompted a search for a more pluralistic approach rather than the monolithic one that now seemed all too reminiscent of Nazi times. As Metzler indicates, a new model was found in systems theory, borrowed from the U.S. generally and the Department of Defense specifically, with its feedback loop. The model adopted was of a state separate from but led by society, with the goal of rational, systematic and future-oriented change. She demonstrates that with the advent of the first Social Democrat regime since the Weimar Republic, more democracy was promoted, beginning with more transparency in the chancellor's office itself. In the bureaucracy social scientists now gained a role, a new privilege, but of course political realities kept social science from accomplishing as much as it might have aspired to.
The historical consensus is thus, as Metzler observes, that planning failed. She nicely notes that none of the players mention planning in their memoirs. What became apparent was that the modern state was essentially ungovernable. The oil crisis of 1973 made all too clear that there were many things beyond government control. Contributing to the new uncertainties was the "culture shift" Ronald Inglehart so adroitly documented; increasing numbers of people everywhere in the West were measurably moving to more post-materialist values. While planning failed, what did succeed, commensurate with this value shift, is a shift away from the traditional view of state versus society to a notion of the state as a fully integrated part of society which, with society's participation, makes binding decisions for this society.
Metzler has certainly done her homework and is as thorough as one would expect of a proper German scholar, but her style is refreshingly felicitous and readable. That style should help give the book a wider audience, well beyond the limited readership that its academically specialized title would seem to suggest that it really deserves. Like an Entwicklungsroman, the volume depicts, with great good sense and sensibility, the coming-of-age of the modern German polity.
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Citation:
Ulf Zimmermann. Review of Metzler, Gabriele, Konzeptionen politischen Handelns von Adenauer bis Brandt: Politische Planung in der pluralistischen Gesellschaft.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
November, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12570
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