ABSTRACT
Democracy is a fragile collective good. The history of democratic political systems is not only a success story but also a history of drawbacks and reversals. In the European context in particular the German and Italian experience in the first half of the twentieth century shows that democracy needs more than just formal democratic procedures for its stability. To analyze the history of democratic development it is necessary to look at the conditions of its genesis as well as at the basic mechanisms upporting and sustaining it. Recent major works have highlighted and proved the significance of historical constellations and sequences for democratic development (Putnam 1993; Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992). Applying such a historical perspective, however, is beyond the scope of what can be done and is intended here. The focus is much more narrow, concentrating on the organizational underpinnings of democracy in Federal Germany in the past few decades. In conceptual terms it is the question about social structural conditions favoring and stabilizing democracy. Of the many theoretical alleys to address this question, two conceptual developments seem to be the most promising: the neo-Toquevillean approaches and the conflict theoretical approaches to participation and democracy. The first strand is partly inspired by the research program on political culture, initiated by the paradigmatic study The Civic Culture (1963) by Almond and Verba, and breathes new life into it by making use of the concept of social capital in order to find the connections between culture, social struc-
ture, and political institutions (Putnam 1993, ch. 6). It places emphasis on social and political integration. The latter approach is primarily concerned with the problem of power distribution, political equality, and political conflict, raised by authors like Dahrendorf (1975), Rueschemeyer et al. (1992), and Coser (1956, 1968).
