Compare and explain the historical political instability experienced by France, Germany and Italy - Essay Example

Compare and explain the historical political instability experienced by France, Germany and Italy" There is a period in every nation’s history when political turbulence reigns. These are periods when governments experience economic, social and political crises, which could be the result of contemporary development or a change in political system. More specifically, political instability could be attributed on several factors such as industrialization, population growth, “the revolution of rising expectations” or even international tensions.1 “Some social scientists have followed Aristotles view that political instability is generally the result of a situation in which the distribution of wealth fails to correspond with the distribution of political power and have echoed his conclusion that the most stable type of political system is one based on a large middle class. Others have adopted Marxist theories of economic determinism that view all political change as the result of changes in the mode of production. Still others have focused on governing elites and their composition and have seen in the alienation of the elite from the mass the prime cause of revolutions and other forms of violent political change.” (Brittanica, par. 1) Vibrant democracies in Europe have undergone same internal political conflicts, which have brought down governments and have shaken political systems. France, Germany and Italy have experienced their own respective political upheavals in differing timelines in their history. This made it possible for us to improve our ability to describe and analyze any pattern, situations or factors that brought about conflicts in European political system. Critical Timelines Political instability in France was highlighted in the 3rd Republic - the period after the fall of the Second Empire when a parliamentary regime was established. It lasted for 70 years until the invasion of France by Germany in 1940. “Throughout its seventy-year history, the Third Republic stumbled from crisis to crisis, from collapsing governments to the appointment of a mentally ill president.” (Wikipedia, par. 11) The Third Republic was never meant to be a long-term government. It was supposed to be a transition government designed for a people seeking a political identity. Thus it was prone to collapse in regularity “as radicals, socialists, liberals, conservatives, republicans and monarchists all fought for control.” (Wikipedia) Some historians contend that this instability is mainly a symptom of a Republic with weak political parties. The Fourth Republic, which was established in 1946 after the war, is said to be a revival of the Third Republic in many aspects with its fourth republican constitution. This is the reason why its government inherited almost the same flaws. By 1958, political instability and inability to deal with controversial issues forced the then President Charles DeGaulle to resign. A Le Monde news article, to wit, commented in the aftermath: “The trouble is that nowadays it is no longer really democracy that is at stake, at least not parliamentary democracy. Too often, political parties seem to accept provisionally — and even then uncomfortably — parliamentary rules in order to dispense with them better soon afterwards.” The German experience in the pre-war era, also referred to as the Weimar Republic, followed the same pattern. From 1919, rising from the ashes of the German Empire, Germany was in the throes of economic collapse due to the Great Depression and the harsh conditions dictated by the Treaty of Versailles. This aggravated a volatile political landscape marred by power plays between parties and indifference among the political mass towards its political system. “Even the popular war hero, General Paul von Hindenburg, who became President in 1925, could not save it.” (Zaide, p. 257) It was no surprise that “at the beginning of the 1930s, Germany was not far from a civil war. Paramilitary troops, which were set up by several parties, intimidated voters and seeded violence and anger among the public, who suffered from high unemployment and poverty.” (Wikipedia, Weimar Republic) The political instability in Italy happened in its contemporary history – from 1946 to 1992. On the losing end in the Second World War, Italy was left to contend in the aftermath with “severely damaged country, with innumerable victims, a destroyed economy, and a desperate general condition.” (Wikipedia) For years after establishing a new republic in 1948, it has to deal with a lingering internal politically motivated fighting and attempts at political reforms. Controversial issues in contention include institutional matters, questions regarding the royal family and the shadows of the past fascist regime as well as threats of communism. Polarized Pluralism Giovanni Sartori, a political scientist, provides a model that could aptly describe the common structural characteristics of the multi-party political system that have caused instability among France, Germany and Italy in the abovementioned timelines. He calls it polarized pluralism which is “a peculiarly unfortunate combination of features in certain systems of proportional representation tending to result in a fragmented polity threatened with chaos.” (Isaac, par. 5) Sartori outlined several factors that lead to this theorem. Foremost is the existence of five or more relevant parties. In France, for example there were the Socialist, Radical, Republican, Democrats, those espousing the monarchial cause and other relevant minorities. This is also true in Weimar Germany with its share of parties dominated by right wing and left-wing parties. Italy, too, was faced with an emergence of political forces that replaced fascism. In Sartori’s Typology of Party Systems, he argued that number of parties, “not only reflects the concentration of power within the system but also affects the interplay of parties, dictating different methods of competition and cooperation and affecting the success of governing coalition.” (“Party System Size”, Chapter 9) Second is the existence of an anti-system party. This is the force, which opposes the legitimacy of the incumbent system. In France, it was those parties who want a return to monarchy. In Germany they were the radical left-wing communists who want to abolish the present system they brand as “capitalist rule”. This is also the same in the case of Italy with monarchists and leftists alternately refute to accept the system’s authority. Third is the existence of bilateral oppositions which cannot join forces because each is closer to the governing party than to each other. The three countries had a solid history of left wing and right wing parties whose difference could not be reconciled. And finally, fourth is the prevalence of an ideological culture – all too apparent in the orientations of dominant political parties. Variations Whilst there are stark parallels in the political instability that prevailed of the 3rd and 4th Republic of France, the Weimar Germany and post-war Italy, there were also variations with regards to the prevailing system they were in. Applying Sartori’s anti-system party, for example, each of these countries had oppositionist parties with differing political orientation. The French republican government had to endure the powerful anti-system party who wants a return to monarchy.2 In Germany, the challenge came from the rising power of parties espousing socialist ideologies. Republican Italy, on the other hand, struggled with communism. Furthermore, due to varying timelines, the political systems of France, Weimar Germany and post-war Italy have to deal with varying national issues contained within their respective timelines. In France, the decolonization issue, for example, was an important policy that has sparked further animosity among the factions inside the polity. This included controversial issues that confronted France in Algeria (a crisis that have threatened Paris with a military coup d’etat) and its defeat in Vietnam.3 In Germany, the social unrest was due to a people’s disenchantment over a political system, which was powerless to act on a collapsing economy, unemployment and violence. Also, the state had to deal with a demoralization of a defeated people who were increasingly leaning towards anti-democratic alternatives. This was imminent when the democrats were reduced to a mere minority in the German parliament. 4 The Italian experience shows us a different face. From 1946, the time of the inception of its new republican constitution, to the early 1990s, there were various government turnovers. In the early days of this period, in what sociologist call imperfect bipolarism; a single party dominated the political system, the Christian Democratic Party. This was supposedly an attempt to keep the Communists out of power, in response to the rising tide of the Cold War, which was a dominant issue around those times. 5 Apparently, this supposed solution have come to be acknowledged as the root of instability. Thus the latter period of the Italian experience is dotted with attempts at political reforms, which explained the ever-shifting alliances, coalition governments and various political formulas. Functioning System Gabriel A. Almond, in his arguments in the “Comparative Political Systems (1956)" cites three levels of political system functioning: systems capabilities, conversion processes, and system maintenance and adaptation function. A substantial form of wanting from among these levels could cause paralysis in a political system which would eventually translate into instability. 6 System’s capabilities, according to Almond include all the systems resources – extractive, regulative, distributive, symbolic and responsive capabilities. These range from economic capability, labor, state’s control function to protocol measures and so on. In this aspect, there are different degrees of development in France, Germany and Italy’s political systems. For example, Weimar Germany enjoyed a sizable number of intellectuals and artists among its people while its treasury was bankrupt. In France, in spite of the political turmoil, industrialization was taking place. Conversion process on the other hand refers to the process of conversion of incoming demands into political decisions and their implementations.7 Multi-party systems such as those of France, Germany and Italy has a slow moving conversion process owing to gridlocks brought about by party differences, party-line decisions and incessant bickering. Furthermore, weakness in political parties meant weak links with the society it supposed to represent. Important legislations were, thus, being stalled. Finally, the system maintenance and adaptation refers to the demand “for regular production of political culture as well as reproduction of the present and creation of new political roles and structures.” (Aliev, p.29) In his book, Almonds theorized that in order to study any political system, “one needs to know its underlying propensities as well as its actual performance over a given period of time. He refers to these propensities, or this psychological dimension of the political system, as the "political culture".” (Aliev, p.4) Political systems or governments are the foundation of their respective political cultures. In a new book Almond reflects when governments become a problem: “Although there are many reasons to intervene in and regulate human affairs, such intervention is not always welcomed by all.” (Almond et. al., p.8) Reference List Aliev, Hassan, “Forming of Political System of Tajikistan” North Atlantic Treaty Organization 1997, NATO, Available at http://www.nato.int/acad/fellow/95-97/aliev.pdf. [November 25, 2005] Almond, Gabriel, Powell, G. Bingham Jr., Strom, Kaare and Dalton, Russel, Comparative Politics Today: A World View, 7th ed. (Addison Wesley Longman, 1999) p. 8 “French Fourth Republic,” Wikipedia, Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fourth_Republic [26November 2005] “French Third Republic,” Wikipedia, Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Third_Republic [26November 2005] Isaac, Rael Jean “Israeli Elections” AFSI, Available at http://www.afsi.org/OUTPOST/99JAN/jan3.htm [November 25, 2005] "La France au carrefour", Le Monde. 22.01.1946, No 342, p. 1. Translated by the CVCE Available at http://www.ena.lu/mce.cfm [26November 2005] “Party Explanations That Do Not Work,” Wayne State University. Available at http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:HWuMj6dDm5cJ:www.clas.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/papers/dissertation/chapter6.pdf+G.+Sartori%27s+model&hl=tl [26November 2005] “Political Parties” Compton’s Encyclopedia, 1986 ed. “Political System” Britanica, Available at http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-36745 [26November 2005] “Politics of Italy” Wikipedia, Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Italy> [26 November 2005] “Weimar Republic” Wikipedia, Available at < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic> [26November 2005] Zaide, Sonia M., World History, 3rd ed. (Manila: All-Nations Publishing Co., Inc., 1994) p.421 Read More