Herbert Dittgen

Herbert Dittgen (born October 7, 1956 in Dinslaken ; † November 2, 2007 in Berkeley ) was a German political scientist.

Herbert Dittgen, 2005

Life

Dittgen was born in 1956 in Dinslaken on the Lower Rhine as the son of the head of the Cultural Office, Wilhelm Dittgen . He obtained his Abitur in 1977 at the Otto Hahn Gymnasium in Dinslaken. Between 1978 and 1983 he studied political science, economics and German at the Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg im Breisgau . He received his master's degree in 1983. In 1984 he studied at Georgetown University in Washington, DC in the USA . Between 1985 and 1988 he was a lecturer and research assistant at the Department of Scientific Policy at the University of Freiburg. He received his doctorate in 1988 with Dieter Oberndörfer at the University of Freiburg. In 1995 he completed his habilitation at the University of Göttingen . Between 1998 and 2000 he was a professor of political science at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, which he then held as a full professor for international relations from 2000 to 2007. In the winter semester of 2007 he began a research semester at the University of California at Berkeley. There he died on November 2, 2007 of a heart attack.

Scientific work

After Dittgen in 1986 “Between Politics and Freedom. Alexis de Tocqueville and Karl Marx ”, he turned increasingly to American foreign policy. In 1991, for example, he wrote a book that analyzes German-American security relations in the Helmut Schmidt era and specifically addresses the history and consequences of the NATO double decision . He further specialized in American foreign policy, specifically focusing on the dilemma of American foreign policy after the Cold War . He worked as co-editor of the anthology “The American Dilemma”, for which he wrote the essay “The Dilemma of American Foreign Policy: In Search of a New Strategy”. In his main work, which was also his habilitation thesis, "American Democracy and World Politics", Dittgen wrote a comprehensive structural analysis of the foreign policy of the United States . In his main work he explains that the USA remained the only superpower after the Cold War and that it determines the fate of the world with the help of its military power. The difference to other nations consists not only of the special political weight, but also results from the different political lines of tradition that have shaped foreign policy. The most striking feature here is likely to be the embedding of foreign policy in the system of entanglement of powers, which is supposed to prevent the concentration of power. Dittgen analyzes the interplay between Congress , which has the right to declare war, and the President , who is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and who is constitutionally responsible for shaping foreign policy, from Nixon's reign to George HW Bush's . In addition, Dittgen analyzes the different moral impulses that influence foreign policy. He traces the history of American foreign policy from the bipartisan consensus to curb imperialist aspirations in the Soviet Union to the conceptlessness of the Clinton era .

Furthermore, Dittgen directs his attention to how foreign policy can also be efficient in a democratic community . He differentiates American foreign policy between a long-term, strategic policy that requires political legitimacy on the part of the people and Congress, and a “crisis policy” that gives a president the right to react quickly in wartime: “Congress needs as one advisory institution a lot of time to take a position. Its influence is therefore limited in the case of rapid military actions. The overwhelming support for the president in times of crisis greatly restricts the options for congress members, including the role of spectator. ”Limitations on the power of the president in“ times of crisis ”resulted from the War Powers Resolution resulting from the Vietnam War . This grants Congress more power, since the President is now obliged to obtain Congress approval when dispatching troops.

He was a member of the Migration Council .

Important publications

Books

• American Democracy and World Politics. Foreign policy in the United States, Paderborn: Schöningh Verlag 1998
• German-American security relations in the Helmut Schmidt era. History and consequences of the NATO double decision, Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 1991 (American Studies, Vol. 69)
• Politics between freedom and despotism. Alexis de Tocqueville and Karl Marx, Freiburg / Munich: Alber Verlag 1986 (Alber brochure law and social sciences)
• Immigration and Ethnicity in the United States. Issue of Amerikastudien / American Studies. Published on behalf of the German Society for American Studies, vol. 40, issue 3/1995
• The American Dilemma. The United States after the end of the East-West conflict, (with Michael Minkenberg), Paderborn: Schöningh 1996
• The American Impasse. US Domestic and Foreign Policy after the Cold War, (with Michael Minkenberg), Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press 1996 (Pitt Series in Policy and Institutional Studies)

Essays

• President and Congress in the Foreign Policy Decision-Making Process, in: Jäger, Wolfgang / Haas, Christoph M./Welz, Wolfgang (ed.), Government System of the USA: Lehr- und Handbuch, 3rd revised. and actual Ed., Munich / Vienna 2007, pp. 395–419.
• World without Borders? Reflections on the Future of the Nation State, in: Policymaking and Democracy. A Multinational Anthology, ed. By Stuart Nagel, Lanham, et al. a .: Lexington 2003, pp. 221-241
• Who understands the Nice decisions? Democracy needs political leadership, in: Berliner Republik 5/2001, pp. 48–53
• Paradoxes of Political Power - Political Decisions in the Presidential and Chancellor Democracy, in: Representative Politics or Decision-making Politics? On the Change of Political Styles in Western Democracies, ed. v. Karl-Rudolf Korte / Gerhard Hirscher (eds.), Munich 2000, pp. 193–212
• Limits in the age of globalization. Reflections on the thesis of the end of the nation state, in: Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, 9th vol. H. 1 (1999), pp. 3–26
• World without Borders? Reflections on the Future of the Nation-State, in: Government and Opposition, vol. 34, no. 2 (Spring 1999), pp. 161-179
• Political leadership in Bonn and Washington: Formal and informal conditions of government in the parliamentary and presidential system of government, in: Solidarity community and fragmented society: parties, milieus and associations in comparison, ed. v. Tobias Dürr and Franz Walter, Opladen: Leske + Budrich 1999, pp. 249–264
• Volk Nation or Nation of Immigrants? The Current Debate about Immigration in Germany and the United States in Comparative Perspective, in: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Welfare State in Germany and the United States: Welfare Policies and Immigrants' Citizenship, ed. v. Hermann Kurthen, Jürgen Fijalkowski and Gert G. Wagner, Stamford, Conn./London: JAI Press 1998, pp. 107-139
• The American Debate about Immigration in the 1990s: A New Nationalism after the End of the Cold War ?, in: Stanford Humanities Review, 5th Jg., H. 2 (1997)
• World without borders? Reflections on the future of the nation state, in: Capitalism as fate? On the politics of delimitation, ed. v. Karl Heinz Bohrer u. Kurt Scheel, Merkur 51st vol., H. 9/10 (1997), pp. 941-948
• The era of the East-West negotiations and the economic and currency crises (1969–1981), in: Germany and the USA in the 20th century. History of Political Relations, ed. v. Klaus Larres et al. Torsten Oppelland, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1997, pp. 178–203
• President and Congress in the foreign policy decision-making process, in: Government system of the USA. Teaching and manual, ed. by Wolfgang Jäger / Wolfgang Welz, Munich / Vienna: Oldenbourg 1995 (2nd edition 1998), pp. 420–440
• American Foreign Policy after the End of the Cold War: In Search of a Theory and Strategy for a New World Order, in: Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 3/1994, pp. 492–500
• American Foreign Policy After the Cold War: the New Challenges, in: Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, 2/1994, pp. 131–144
• American Congress and Foreign Policy. Democratic foreign policy after the end of the Cold War, in: Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 1/1993, pp. 72–91
• Tocqueville Reconsidered: Foreign Policy and the American Democracy, in: Liberty, Equality, Democracy, ed. by Eduardo Nolla, New York / London: New York University Press 1992, pp. 75-90
• Strategy, arms control and reassurance: dilemmas in German-American security relations, in: East-West arms control. Challenges for the Western Alliance, ed. by David Dewitt and Hans Rattinger , London / New York: Routledge 1992, pp. 3-32

Web links

• Literature by and about Herbert Dittgen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Page by Herbert Dittgen at the University of Mainz

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://rat-fuer-migration.de/verbindungen/