Introduction

Germany’s unification in 1990 encompassed multiple processes of fundamental system change. On the international level, unification entailed the creation of a new political community through the merger of two previously separate political, economic, and social systems. Integration theory addresses underlying socio-economic and political factors encouraging the formation of new political communities. Integration theory usefully clarifies the alternative choices that Allied and German elites confronted in 1989–1990, but it singularly fails to address a crucial consequence of integration on both a regional and national level: that of accompanying democratization. The particular course of German unification—as a compelling instance of the political integration of two previously separated systems—reveals the salience of Dankwart A. Rustow’s general theory of democratization, both with respect to the process itself and its subsequent consequences. By early 1990 government and opposition representatives reached a fateful decision to schedule East Germany’s first competitive national election to the Volkskammer in March.