[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] The Real East German Problem?

eternityfan has made a couple of fascinating posts (1, 2) on the apparent growth of political extremism in the former East Germany, as länd elections gave the Party of Democratic Socialism (made up of former Communists) 30% of the vote in Brandenburg and the allegedly neo-Nazi National Democratic Party 10% of the vote in Saxony.

Cause for the growth of this political instability in the East has been ascribed to East Germany's lagging economy, which remains consistently behind the more prosperous West, with higher rates of unemployment and poverty and lower levels of income and productivity and purportedly dim prospects. The American publication Business Week argues in the upcoming article "Germany: A Brighter Sun In The East" that by most standards East Germany's economy since reunification has been a success.

( What's working? )

( What's not working? )

Radical breaks in East Germany's current trajectory--relatively slow convergence with West German standards of living coupled with a Bavaria-like sense of distance from the "center"--aren't very likely, barring unlikely things like an economic miracle in the East at one extreme or the growth of East German separatism on the other. The weight of East Germans within the broader German framework does seem likely to weaken, if only because of the very unfavourable demographic trends established long before reunification.

At the risk of sounding facile, though, reunification won't be achieved in the full sense of the word until the assumptions (of rapid convergence by East Germans, of full assimilation by West Germans) formed by both parts of the German people during die Wende are discarded. It's anyone's guess when or if that will happen.

( Counter )