ABSTRACT
The former German Democratic Republic’s (GDR) present predicament is similar to that faced by many countries across Europe: How to deal with globalization and demographic change? Financial globalization may put the former GDR at greater risk of slipping into crisis than the western part of Germany. Its economy has been trailing that of the rest of the country since reunification in 1990. With unemployment rate in the former GDR much higher than in the western part of the country, many Easterners do not clearly understand why globalization does mean a sharing of jobs and goods within the national boundaries of unified Germany. An examination of the separate bureaucratic experience of the divided country will help understand why it is still so difficult for the East to share the benefits of globalization. After the separation of Germany, a wide gap developed between the bureaucracies of the GDR in the East and the Federal Republic in the West. Whereas the West German bureaucrats were selected because of their qualifications and continued to form a conservative, honest, and conscientious civil service, the East German bureaucrats were recruited primarily because of their political and ideological loyalty. Gravier (2003a,b) has argued that the loyalty factor has offered an important framework for civil service recruitment even after 1990 because it rooted the selection of East Germans in a legal procedure that had been elaborated over the years and could not be considered as an ad hoc solution to purge unwelcome personnel. But before 1990, East German bureaucrats had to work according to the principles of socialist morality and ethics. They also had to demonstrate their capacity to transform the general resolutions of the Communist Party — known as the Socialist Unity Party (SED) — into concrete administrative actions. One of the main principles of the GDR civil service was the blind observance of a socialist law and order. The disparity between the two bureaucracies added to the socioeconomic and political problems that became evident at the time of reunification in 1990. It has been argued that those who steered the processes of reunification failed to design institutions of sound governance that fit the circumstances of the governed.
