Page 89 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

62 THE MAKING OF THE GERMAN POST-WAR ECONOMY

At the same time, however, the German people welcomed the
resurrection of a democratic consciousness and appreciated the
opportunity to express themselves via representative bodies. In particular
the regained democracy in post-war West Germany was not taken for
granted. The German people were aware of the fact that the perpetuation
of democracy ultimately required the active participation of the citizenry as
the actual sovereign. Thus political parties committed to common welfare
were important for the integration and representation of individual
interests. Furthermore, in order to facilitate the formation of opinion,
democracy entailed transparency. These preconditions influenced political
objectives, party platforms, and not least the communication of political
and economic programmes.
While the academic schools had to fight for publicity, the political
parties fought for credibility. Ultimately, both were dependent on public
acceptance and the latter on voter preferences. The representative
character and exposed nature of political parties, however, not only
involved the opportunity to fight for majorities in parliament, but also
entailed more public attention and, thus, media coverage. Additionally, the
parties had more opportunities and facilities to address the general public
with their party platforms. Programmatic conceptions were not only
publicised by newspaper articles, posters and pamphlets, but also
enunciated at presentations and stagings during election campaigns. For
this purpose, the complex political programmes were simplified and
popularised.
This chapter is a critical assessment of the programmatic developments
regarding economic and socio-political conceptions of the major political
parties in the three western zones of occupation, i.e. the SPD, the
CDU/CSU, and finally the FDP, and the communication of their
respective party platform.