Democracy in big cities: the case of Germany

Abstract

Cities and democracy may largely be conceived as synonyms in German history. In the Middle Ages, when the social life in rural areas was subjected to a rigid control of the landowning nobility, the urban citizenry already enjoyed a considerable degree of political freedom and autonomy. Regarded from an institutional point of view, the development of urban Germany in the nineteenth century followed by and large the path described in the theories of modernization. Not only in Prussia, but in the other German states as well, cities were pacemakers in the development of modern local selfadministration. While the urban citizenry was endowed with the right of selfadministration by the Prussian municipal charter of 1807, corresponding rights were still denied for a considerable time to the people living in rural areas. Local self-administration, although restricted by the supervisory power of the authoritarian Prussian state and by undemocratic electoral rules, entailed the citizens’ right to elect the city council, which was responsible for providing a large number of social, economic and cultural services and was entitled to raise local income and property taxes in order to perform the responsibilities attributed to the cities. The development of participative institutions went along with the formation of a highly efficient local bureaucracy (see for details: Gunlicks 1986: 5–23; von Saldern 1993).