Abstract

While the recent conservative turn in West German politics immediately suggests a continental version of the victories of Thatcher in England and Reagan in the United States, the specific political and cultural context warrants closer scrutiny. The arithmetic of parliamentary procedure in the Bundestag has tended to obscure the real constellation of power: throughout the seventies, the Social Democratic ascendancy relied on the now defunct coalition with the small Liberal party which alone made it possible to outmaneuver the numerically superior Christian Democrats. Nevertheless on a fundamental level, Conservatism remained a strong force within national politics, exercising its influence directly via various governmental agencies in the legislature and the judiciary and indirectly through the increasingly conservative character of the SPD-FDP coalition itself during the Schmidt administration.