German parties were structurally incapable of claiming to represent the general will

Evidence

See Demokratie und Partei, ed. by Peter R. Rohden, Vienna, 1932, Introduction: “The distinguishing characteristic of German parties is …that all parliamentary groups are resigned not to represent the volonté générale… That is why the parties were so embarrassed when the November Revolution brought them to power. Each of them was so organized that it could only make a relative claim, i.e., it always reckoned with the existence of other parties representing other partial interests and thus naurally limited its own ambitions” (pp. 13–14). — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2463

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: This contrast (partial vs. general will) sets up a key scaffold for later Islamophobia-field readings on how totalitarian/monolithic movements claim to embody the people in ways party systems cannot.

Related

• Nazi leaders courted Communist support to govern against any parliamentary majority (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Nazi Germany was actually governed by secret internal party edicts, not public law #complicates (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2711