ABSTRACT
West Germany's political culture the values, attitudes and opinions of its citizens toward political objects has been intensively studied during the three decades of the Republics existence. The five-nation political culture study of G. Almond and S. Verba, The Civic Culture, included Germany and was based on a survey conducted in 1959. The major problem of West German political culture in the 1980s is not the lack of support for democratic norms and values among the citizenry, but rather the hierarchical, closed character of the Republics institutions and procedures. Offes equation of the 1935 Wagner Act in the United States with the 1966 West German Grand Coalition, with both cited as examples of ruling class adaptation to a crisis. In the United States and Great Britain the Constitution is a political symbol which can be employed to generate and maintain effective support. In 1955 the dominant attitude toward the Federal Republics Basic Law was either ignorance or indecision.
