ABSTRACT
Economic growth did require that Germany and Japan develop institutions and policies that would allow the two nations to cope with the problems of reconstruction and then of generating real economic growth. The emergence of Germany and Japan as exemplars of export-led economic growth depended on two additional factors: attainment of domestic political stability and development of a framework of institutions and policies that could make growth a reality. The details of the complaints against Erhard and German economic policy would inevitably change with the altered circumstances produced by the Korean War. As in Japan, political stability owed as much to a shared desire for economic growth as to genuine consensus on deeper and more contentious questions affecting national identity. The growing acceptance of democratic norms and practices in Germany and Japan owed much to the fact that democracy was in both nations accompanied by unprecedented material prosperity; without economic growth, politics would surely have looked very different.
