West Germany’s redistributive integration policy followed from its pluralism and Cold-War politics

Evidence

As Schwartz traces in his comparative chapter on East and West Germany, both states first pursued the Allied goal of rapidly assimilating the migrants in the German community before policies diverged from 1952–3 on: while the GDR stopped its social policy for the ‘resettlers’, the Equalization of Burdens Law in the FRG initiated the greatest redistribution of wealth the German state had ever undertaken before reunification. This was partly due to the international context – while the GDR needed to show consideration for its Eastern European partners, the Western Bloc had an interest in raising pressure on the communist regimes. Moreover, while the authoritarian GDR government could just decree from above that the expellees had been successfully integrated, the more pluralistic FRG had gradually allowed them to get organized and to lobby. — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 73

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the volume’s core question of which state structures let a grievance constituency lobby versus get decreed away — links to reader’s broader work on threat-hardened group solidarity. — connects to: Citizenship and economic boom eased postwar expellee integration in West Germany — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 196; West German postwar restoration followed an anti-welfare neoliberal programme

Broader Connections

• West German postwar restoration followed an anti-welfare neoliberal programme #contradicts (0.72)