Latent institutional elasticity: The demise of communism in the east Germany 1989/1990 and Gerhard Lehmbruch’s concept of administrative interest mediation

Abstract

This chapter refers to the notion of ‘administrative interest mediation’ coined by Gerhard Lehmbruch in an influential paper in the 1980s conceiving public administration not just as an a-political tool of government but as a relatively independent institutional segment assuming functions of political integration and stabilization. Lehmbruch emphasized that the integrative role of public administration was contingent on a productive configuration of structural properties and political requirements thus anticipating more recent scholarly discussions on goodness of fit and dynamics of institutional change. Just in line with this discourse, the present chapter emphasizes institutional elasticity as a crucial ingredient of integrative capacity in the sense that dominant structural conditions may remain stable while the actual exchange with the political and societal environment may be subject to substantial though latent change. This is being illustrated through an exemplary historical case which is the highly turbulent phase of temporary re-stabilization of what used to be the German Democratic Republic (GDR)—or Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR—in early 1990. The argument is that it was the purposeful yet latent adjustment of existing institutional structures and related investments in political legitimacy that brought about the smooth and peaceful coping with a twofold challenge namely the transition from communism to democratic capitalism and the unification of two German states. The core-institution of interest is the Treuhandanstalt, a GDR institution created March 1, 1990, as a compromise between reform-oriented communists and the democratic civil movement and persisting throughout dramatic political and economic transformation by virtue of substantial adjustment of purpose and robustness of structural status quo.