ABSTRACT
The German party system is merely the latest in a series of discontinuous ones since the Empire era. From 1871 to 1918, parties played only a limited role in the nondemocratic political system; instead power was wielded by the kaiser, the chancellor, and the traditional elites—the bureaucracy, the military, the nobility, and the large landowners. In the 1970s and 1980s, environmental, peace, antinuclear, and women's movements mushroomed as parallel political organizations to the parties. The transformation of West Germany's social structure has affected the parties' internal life. From the 1960s until the 1980s, party functionaries successfully recruited new members, but since then the pattern has been a steady decline in membership. In the 1990s, the voters charge party leaders with acting first to protect their own interests and only secondarily those of the public. The voters' critique is remforced by the media, which are not reluctant to publicize the leaders' personal enrichment and involvement in financial corruption scandals.
