German Unification

M. Donald Hancock is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for European Studies at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of West Germany: The Politics of Democratic Corporatism (1989) and co-author and co-editor of Managing Modern Capitalism: Industrial Renewal and Workplace Democracy in Western Europe and the United States (1992, together with John Logue and Bernt Schiller). His research focuses on the political economy of Sweden, Germany, and the European Community.Helga A. Welsh holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Munich and for several years was a research fellow at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. She has held visiting appointments at the University of South Carolina and the University of Arizona, and is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at Wake Forest University. She specializes in European politics and has published in the areas of German history and politics and in comparative East European Studies.

• Preface -- Introduction -- Background and Impetus -- The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the GDR: Evolution, Revolution, and Diffusion -- West German Policy Toward East Germany: A Motor of Unification? -- Process and Outcomes -- Delegitimation of the Old Regime: Reforming and Transforming Ideas in the Last Years of the GDR -- Steps Toward Union: The Collapse of the GDR and the Unification of Germany -- Exiting the GDR: Political Movements and Parties Between Democratization and Westernization -- Parties and the Problems of Governance During Unification -- An Unwelcome Enlargement? The European Community and German Unification -- Consequences and Problematics -- An Impossible Dream? Privatizing Collective Property in Eastern Germany -- Social Policies at a Crossroads -- Economic and Political Performance: Patterns and Prospects -- German Security Policy In Post-Yalta Europe -- Germany in Transition: The Challenge of Coping with Unification -- Conclusion -- Appendixes -- Chronology of German Unification -- A Ten-Point Program for Overcoming the Division of Germany and Europe -- Treaty of 18 May 1990 between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic Establishing a Monetary, Economic and Social Union -- Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic on the Establishment of German Unity -- German Elections, 1949–1993