political apathy

The term political disenchantment , also political disenchantment or political fatigue , describes two different types of negative attitudes of citizens of a state:

Disenchantment with politicians and parties as dissatisfaction with current politics on the one hand and

Disenchantment with politics or the state as general dissatisfaction with the political system and democratic institutions on the other.

Political passivity and political disinterest can be the result of negative experiences in connection with political conditions and events ; but they can also be an expression of general satisfaction. In this respect, disinterest and a lack of participation in the political process are not necessarily an expression of dissatisfaction, of “displeasure” with “politics”. Conversely, even if one considers comprehensive political participation as ideal for everyone as possible , political engagement can not be assessed positively per se, especially not if this engagement is based on purely destructive, anti-democratic motives. Michael Eilfort even thinks that "the mobilization of politically uninterested, uninformed and unreflective non-voters [...] brings an element of uncertainty into play and [...] is an indication of dangerous emotionalization", that it is better if those who have been characterized accordingly disagree keep away from political process.

Taking into account the parameters satisfaction vs. Dissatisfaction, closeness vs. Psychologists Janas and Preiser distinguish between four types of distance from politics and willingness to participate:

few committed with high political dissatisfaction ("resigned"),
Little committed with high political satisfaction ("apathetic satisfied"),
Engaged with high political dissatisfaction and rather unconventional participation (“revolutionaries”) and
Loyal and system-compliant committed people with little political dissatisfaction (“functionaries”).

The fourth group also includes supporters of opposition parties who are dissatisfied with the current government policy and “weary” of it, but who are confident that they can bring about change by changing government.

In the “Digital Dictionary of the German Language (DWDS)” of the “Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences” a strong connotation of the terms “disaffection” towards the terms “apathy” and above all “resignation” is shown (in the sense that these terms appear frequently in texts in the same context). According to this analysis, “revolutionaries” and “functionaries” are not, strictly speaking, “disgruntled” because of their commitment. The “apathetic”, on the other hand, lacks “annoyance” in the sense of “anger” ( not being angry is a characteristic of apathy ). However, some sources mere passive Stay is (especially in the sense of not voting ) as "apathy".

As early as 1966, the political scientist Ernst Fraenkel complained about the “dissatisfaction with parliament” that had shown itself on the occasion of the 1965 federal election . The accusation that parliaments were ineffective “chat booths” that did not enforce the “ will of the people ” was raised in Germany before 1933.

Although the phenomena declared as “disaffection with politics” (lack of observation and / or rejection of politics) were also known before Fraenkel's analysis, the term first appeared in the German debate at the end of the 1980s. The Society for German Language declared it word of the year in 1992 and two years later it found its way into the Duden . In addition, related terms such as “state”, “ politician ” or “ disenchantment with parties ” have emerged.

Indications for the existence of widespread disaffection with politics

Disenchantment with politics can be seen primarily in the decline in the number of members of political parties and in a falling voter turnout . However, it must be taken into account that "apathetically satisfied" in the sense of Janas / Preiser (see above) are not "disgruntled" and "revolutionaries" in the sense of Janas / Preiser do not turn away from "politics" and that political engagement does not only consist in this to observe the activities of parties or to support them (financially), if necessary even to participate in their activities.

In the " Bonn Republic " lost due to the ban on the SRP (1952) and the KPD (1956) as well as the relatively low number of votes of right-wing and left-wing extremist parties in Bundestag and Landtag elections (decidedly right-wing parties were able to become West German after the 1950s until 1990 Do not establish parliaments on a permanent basis) many out of sight that there have always been “ democratically deprived ” voters who rejected the free-democratic basic order within the meaning of the Basic Law. With the accession of the five new countries to the FRG, the proportion of those who viewed their democratic system with fundamental skepticism, if not negative, increased. However, in 2013 the Bertelsmann Foundation advocated the thesis that the assumption that there is increasing disenchantment with democracy in Germany is a “myth”. The Federal Agency for Civic Education contradicted this in 2016 by pointing out that in eastern Germany the proportion of those satisfied with the functioning of democracy in Germany had fallen to 47% in 2015.

Disenchantment with politics / parties in Germany

For some time now, in addition to disenchantment with politics (in the sense of dissatisfaction with the results of political decisions), there has also been an increasing disenchantment with parties . Party-obsessed people only reject work in and with the parties, but not necessarily any political commitment. Declining membership numbers (see table), a high average age of the members (in 2016 more than half of the CDU and SPD members were over 60 years old) and a decrease in the number of core voters show that the political system in the Federal Republic of Germany is no longer as stable is like in the days of the Bonn Republic . However, it must be taken into account that the decline in unconditional loyalty to a party, especially a people 's party , and the increase in the number of swing voters are not symptoms of party disaffection, since swing voters only vote for another party but do not mistrust all parties so much. that they do not give their vote to any of them.

When it becomes known

that decisions by key politicians are evidently neither based on reasons of conscience nor based on the " common good ", but are an expression of lobbying ,
that the government or the parliamentary group leadership exert pressure on “deviants” among the parliamentary group members and
that time and again individual politicians (from the point of view of the electorate) behaved incorrectly,

then that would lead to a rejection of the " political class ", the politicians in the establishment , as a whole among many eligible voters . An important role in the deterioration of the image of the political class is attributed to the mass media , which allegedly created the impression that there are predominantly “black sheep” among politicians.

Year (1990-2016)	Membership numbers of CDU, CSU, SPD, FDP, B90 / Greens, PDS / Die Linke in thousands.
1990	2321.7
1991	2206.3
1992	2067.6
1993	1989.0
1994	1952.4
1995	1896.3
1996	1846.3
1997	1805.3
1998	1794.4
1999	1779.3
2000	1722.9
2001	1684.4
...	...
2008	1409.0
...	...
2011	1182.7
...	...
2016	1181.4

An increasing disenchantment with parties is also reflected in the declining reputation of politicians in Germany. Demoscopes regularly conduct surveys on the reputation of certain professional groups; politicians regularly do very poorly.

Disenchantment with politics among young people

The disenchantment with politics in the sense of a distance to political parties is pronounced among young people. The result of the 14th Shell Youth Study from 2002 reads: “In the meantime, only 30% of young people between 12 and 25 years of age describe themselves as politically interested. For young people between the ages of 15 and 24, a time series is available for the development of political interest in the context of the earlier Shell youth studies. According to this, the proportion of young people interested in politics has fallen from 55% in 1984 or even 57% in 1991 to 34%. ”A disenchantment with politicians can also be blamed for this. According to the 2015 Shell Youth Study, the proportion of those interested in politics rose to 41%. It has to be taken into account that this is not the same group of people as in 2002. The respondents at the time were around 30 years old in 2015.

One discussed topic is that allegedly young people under the age of 18 have hardly any political say where there is no right to vote for younger people. Their wishes are hardly taken into account as long as they are not entitled to vote, and thus this group (although 14-year-olds four years later and older youths even earlier can give politicians a “receipt” in the form of a non-election) is less interesting for politicians than currently eligible voters . It remains questionable whether a general lowering of the voting age would be a solution (there is sometimes a right to vote from 16 at local and state level ).

reasons

Various reasons are put forward for the development and manifestation of disenchantment with politics:

Electoral promises not kept

A prominent example of a missed election promise is the grand coalition's 2007 sales tax increase by three percentage points, even though the coalitionists had announced either only a two point increase or no increase at all before the election. The comment of the then Vice Chancellor of the Grand Coalition (2006) Müntefering (SPD) that it was “unfair” to measure the CDU and SPD by their campaign promises increased the annoyance of many voters.

In recent German history , after the reunification of the Federal Republic with the GDR, there was an increasing disenchantment with politics. The “Berliner Zeitung” headline on June 1, 1992: “ Hardly liberated and already sullen ”. In addition to the general economic downturn, there was the high national debt, party and financial scandals, refugee problems, growing unemployment and the massive closure of factories in the East as well as, in general, the disappointment with full-bodied (election) promises and their subsequent relativization or withdrawal. A prominent example is the promise made by the then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl on June 21, 1990 (during the debate on the two-plus-four treaty in the Bundestag ): “ Only the state treaty gives the chance that Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia , Brandenburg and Saxony can soon become blooming landscapes again… ”. The warning from the then SPD chancellor candidate, Oskar Lafontaine , that German unity would be expensive contributed significantly to his electoral defeat.

In general, however, the question arises as to whether politicians are in a position to ensure that countries or regions "flourish" economically on their own . Without investments from the (also foreign) private sector, which is not necessarily geared towards the well-being of the people in a certain state, economic progress in a market economy is not possible.

Franz Müntefering speaks in the above. For example, a dilemma: Majorities in an election are generally only given to parties that do not offend their potential voters with statements they do not want to hear before the election. On the subject of “Duty of the parties to keep election promises”, Thomas Grüter puts forward the “ machivellist ” thesis in the spectrum of science : “Whoever has once won power is only bound by his election promises to the extent that they secure him in power for the next election . ”In particular, the forgetfulness of the voters (what do they remember about the 2009 federal election?) And the importance of the topic (is the“ fraud ”from the point of view of a voter so bad that he“ punishes the party ”by not voting? got to"?).

“Wrong” attitudes and “wrong” actions by elected politicians

Politicians are often accused of a lack of closeness to the people (the term “people” means “simple people”; members of the elites are not considered part of the “people” in this usage): parties and members of parliament are assumed to be in parliaments despite the requirement of Art 38 para. 1 GG are not delegates of the whole people. The result of parliamentary work is often not in conformity with the wishes of the majority of the participants in the election who legitimize the politicians who have elected one of the ruling parties. It is not recognized that there is no imperative mandate in a representative democracy . Art 38 GG expressly guarantees elected federal representatives a free mandate . The election gave elected officials the mandate to make the decisive decisions in place of the voters. You will be advised by experts in the committees responsible for a specific issue. The main problem here is the lack of transparency of this process for outsiders. Because they cannot understand how a decision was made, many citizens do not identify with the MP or the party they voted for after the election.

In addition, a “ reform backlog ”, i.e. reacting too slowly to current requirements, can contribute to a loss of confidence in the representatives of the people when voters see the politicians of the governing parties as those responsible for the traffic jam, which is usually the case, although in times of Globalization and the requirements of EU directives, the decision-making leeway of politicians in Germany is often less than they are willing to admit.

In the opinion of many eligible voters, important regulations, such as the financing of pensions or the design of the health system, do not take effect quickly enough or not at all. In their opinion, the community tasks are not being solved, and disappointed or angry citizens are faced with the question of the competence of the parties. This situation correlates with the existence of fear of many people, who often attribute it to "politics".

Increasing self-interest of the parties, striving for power and profit and not the well-being of the state and the electorate (ie the “common good”) determined the actions of politicians. Many people feel incapacitated in the face of the seeming omnipotence of the civil servant state or its powerlessness when financially strong global players “show” the state. Loss of trust and rejection of the parties are the result. The personal relationship to the representatives of the people has been almost completely lost. Many people have the feeling that politicians are more concerned with their own staging and interests than with the constructive solution to problems and that they are not ready to admit how little freedom they often have in the age of globalization and Europeanization.

Democracy just party democracy

Although Article 21, Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law only guarantees parties “participation” in the formation of the people's political will, many in Germany have the impression that the terms democracy and party democracy are synonyms.

At least in elections to the German Bundestag, only parties actually have the right to nominate candidates according to proportional representation. The forms of political participation in democracy, however, extend far beyond mere party democracy, namely “from participation in elections and referenda to squatting to revolutionary violence; from discussions about politics in the family or at work to forms of direct and indirect, analogue and digital communication; from exercising mandates in political parties, membership in social associations to strikes and demonstrations; from participation in citizens' initiatives to civil disobedience, for example in Greenpeace campaigns. "

By 1998, according to Dieter Rucht and Roland Roth, the Federal Republic of Germany had become a "republic of movement", the main currents of which had moved into the Bundestag in the form of the Alliance 90 / The Greens party. However, especially the movements of feminism , ecology and pacifism , not only due to the entry of the Greens into the federal government in 1998, "took on patina". In addition, the Bertelsmann Foundation points out that the thesis that there are large numbers of people in Germany who are not politically active but politically active in a broader sense is false: “Those who do not vote typically also participate not in citizens' initiatives and referendums. Nor does he take to the streets as a demonstrator. The lower the likelihood of voting, the lower the other political commitment. "

For many politically active people, the democratic (i.e. not just party-democratic) opportunities for political participation that the Basic Law makes possible are insufficient . Ever since Willy Brandt, as Federal Chancellor after the Bundestag election in 1969, put his government declaration under the motto: “ Dare more democracy! "And especially after reunification, it was and is discussed again and again to fill the blank space of Article 20, Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law that has not been filled since 1949 (where" elections and votes "are mentioned) as well as the direct election of the Federal President in the Basic Law record. Some eligible voters in Germany feel powerless and incapacitated because they have fewer rights of co-determination than their neighbors in other European countries (especially in Switzerland). In a survey by the opinion research institute insa in 2017, 70% of those questioned stated that referendums were more “democratic” than votes in the Bundestag.

However, there are historians and politicians who refer to the experiences of the Weimar Republic (although this failed because of the “wrong” voting behavior of the majority of Germans and not because of their voting behavior ) and therefore fundamentally reject the expansion of grassroots democratic elements in Germany's political system.

Alleged equality of all parties

Many citizens no longer recognize the differences between the big parties because neither party offers any alternatives to the big rival party on many issues. The politics of the major parties hardly differ on essential issues. Since the same policy is being pursued regardless of whether the CDU / CSU or the SPD governs, from the point of view of many eligible voters it no longer makes sense to act as a “ voting cattle ”. Elections only served to legitimize existing politics. It is assumed that the influence of the smaller parties, insofar as they (can) co-govern, is negligible.

It is true that the situation has changed by 2018, when the two “big” parliamentary groups together only have 53% of the seats, when there is a Prime Minister of the Greens in Baden-Württemberg and one of the Left in Thuringia and the AfD has become the third strongest party in Germany. However, the feeling of not being able to “get rid of” a Federal Chancellor persists with many. So, those who in the federal election in 2017 have chosen the AFD, with the campaign slogan: " Merkel ! Must go" had campaigned for himself, paradoxically, causes only a government led by Angela Merkel in the 19th legislative term of the Bundestag , the was able to obtain the necessary majority to govern because the theoretical “alternative” majority from the SPD, Greens and Left that still existed in the 18th electoral period no longer exists since 2017.

It is also correct that formerly small opposition parties who have come under government responsibility regularly appear as "disenchanted" because their policies are not completely different from those of their predecessors. So took over z. B. Of all things, a green foreign minister (until 1998 the party always advertised with its pacifist attitude) was responsible for the Bundeswehr's first combat mission "out of area" .

Fixation of most parties on the "political center"

In states without proportional representation , Hotelling's law is often used as an explanatory model for disenchantment with politics . In the two-party system of the USA, the model can be used to show that parties largely ignore non-center voters for tactical reasons, as they expect the most votes from the so-called median voter . In Germany, for example, small parties are increasingly occupying political niches (FDP, Die Linke, Bündnis 90 / Greens), while the share of votes of the two large parties, the CDU and SPD, has steadily decreased in recent decades. The duplication of the parties represented in the Bundestag is possibly a consequence of the efforts of the major parties towards the center. It turns out that the model developed in the USA is only suitable to a limited extent for explaining the situation in European countries with proportional representation.

Problem groups among eligible voters

Especially among young people, but also among citizens with a low level of education, resignation, a supposedly not endangered well-being, the impatience of the angry citizen , but also the increasing complexity of political decisions are likely to contribute to a growing disinterest in, or reluctance to, daily politics.

It has been empirically proven that the higher the level of education, the greater the commitment to social (but not necessarily to party-political) issues. Many see it as an aid against “wrong” assumptions, attitudes and behavior among (future) eligible voters to promote political education and thereby encourage more people to participate in a democratic way. Through political education should

the "resigned" are made to recognize what realistic possibilities there are to assert their interests after all;
the "apathetically satisfied" are dissuaded from their false assumption that their well-being has nothing to do with political decisions;
the "revolutionaries" are led to see that some of their methods and the realization of their ideals ultimately undermine the rule of law and cause chaos.

A fundamental criticism of this approach is the thesis that cause and effect are systematically exchanged. The Bertelsmann Foundation assumes that the lower class of Germany is "saying goodbye" to active participation in democracy, as if it were a primary action and not a reaction to the political and social situation. In fact, however, the assumption is not realistic that there are policy offers that are suitable for improving the situation of the lower class as a whole. Not even the SPD, as a former workers' party, is willing and able to make such offers. The members of the lower class reacted to this. Wealthy “apathetically satisfied” people, on the other hand, do not really have to be afraid that they will be “approached” personally, for example by having to pay high inheritance tax payments.

Participation of eligible voters (though little appreciated by supporters of educational measures) also increases when the situation in a country comes to a head in a crisis. Seymour Martin Lipset put forward the thesis in 1962: "The political interest of the apathetic [here: previously resigned, dissatisfied] can only be aroused by a mass movement that offers a simple, extremist view of politics."

Longing to turn away from the “unfair” consequences of competitive democracy

It regularly turns out that many do not understand what pluralism means. In the context of the competition theory of democracy, which forms the basis of the Basic Law, there is, contrary to what Jean Jacques Rousseau postulated, no “popular will” in the sense that everyone who wants to belong to the people has to want the same thing. Nonetheless, in arguments “disaffected with politics”, the construct of a “popular will” appears again and again , which must be enforced at all costs. In a pluralistic society there is a multitude of interests, some of which contradict one another and have to be balanced. It is a completely normal process that the interests of minorities who can not assert themselves in the legislative process are ignored. Nonetheless, members of minorities are not without rights; the rule of law is required to protect everyone's fundamental rights , and everyone can z. B. try to have laws that have been passed by majority vote declared unconstitutional. The theoretically possible arbitrariness of a democratic majority is limited by Article 79.3 of the Basic Law, which separates an area of the voting from an area of the non-voting. Even unanimous resolutions may not penetrate into the area of the unadjustable.

Many people do not understand that what is decided by the majority in the field of voting is considered legitimate by “winners”. In the area of voting, however, the question of whether a political decision is “correct” is irrelevant with regard to its legal force. For many underdogs who are convinced that they are “right”, this causes lasting annoyance, especially when they feel they belong to a minority whose interests can easily be overlooked “democratically and under the rule of law”.

Democratic ethos

In 2016 Christian Schlueter of the Frankfurter Rundschau claimed that there was the attitude in broad sections of the population: “Democracy is not absolutely necessary, the main thing is that the store is running.” So a lack of “democratic ethos” can be observed. In the United States, for example, Schlueter said, people born between the world wars considered democratic government to be a sacred value. When asked to rate on a scale from 1 to 10 how 'essential' it was for them to live in a democracy, 72% chose 10. In Europe it was still 55%. In contrast, among Europeans born in 1980 or later, only 45% voted for a 10, in the United States just over 30%. Schlüter concludes from this that democracy loses its future with its offspring. However, values below 10, which were rated as problematic in the study, could also be signs of a decline in enthusiasm in a world that is overloaded with stimuli.

The process of globalization or Europeanization could play an important role in the waning of enthusiasm for democracy, which not only allows the economic policy options of national governments, and even more so of the governments of countries and their parliaments, to tend towards zero. Every government must follow “irrefutable practical constraints” (e.g. transfer EU directives accordingly into national or state law), and it is therefore irrelevant who is in charge of the government.

Post-democracy

Much of the current unease about politics arose from the transformation of democracies into post-democracies .

“On the input side of the political process, post-democratization describes the change towards the disempowerment of citizens and the associated increasing limitation of the role of citizens in the democratic system to the evaluation of the political output. In the post-democratic political system

if the democratic institutions remain formally intact, in reality they lose considerably in importance for democratic decisions;
election campaigns are increasingly freed from content that could form the program of a later government policy. Instead, campaign strategies are increasingly personalized;
policy content is defined in the interaction between political and economic actors - the wishes and needs of the citizens are not taken into account;
the citizen is thus disempowered as a demos de facto - even if not (yet) de jure.

In post-democracy, democracy degenerates into a shell, the inner workings of which have little in common with the idea of rule by the people in the liberal-participatory sense. "

According to Colin Crouch, the majority of citizens in a post-democracy “play a passive, silent [,] even apathetic role, they only react to the signals [given] to them. In the shadow of this political staging, real politics is made behind closed doors: by elected governments and elites who primarily represent the interests of business. "

According to Sonja Kock, "representatives of elitist democracy theories, supporters of" leader democracies "[...] do not assess the change processes towards post-democracy negatively, on the contrary [-] they welcome the change towards an 'expert democracy', since they basically assume that citizens have at most a political opinion, but by no means sufficient specialist knowledge to be able to give adequate answers to political questions in today's - assessed as hypercomplex - political reality [...]. The participation of citizens is reduced to after the ' correct 'decisions were made by experts in order to gain acceptance for them from the public. "

Supporters of a strategy of asymmetrical demobilization hope that understanding the above-mentioned relationships will trigger resignation in those who want something different and that they will therefore stay away from elections in the future .

Wolfgang Merkel reacts ironically to the thesis that there used to be better, more “democratic” conditions in the developed, democratically governed states than today : “Just ask whether an African-American in the United States of the 1950s was a Swiss Women in the sixties or homosexuals in Germany and elsewhere would have preferred to live in the seventies than today ”.

Market belief

From the perspective of economic liberals, the importance of the state should be reduced to a minimum. “The party bickering should be replaced by the freedom of market participants, while adherence to the economic rules of the game creates a spontaneous social order over which the state as the guardian of competition watches over. In overly pointed form, political engagement could be branded per se as a reactionary relapse into traditional thought patterns in the face of such freedom. ”The market and not politicians and their supporters should therefore decide worldwide how economy and society develop. Allegedly (politically) “apathetic” people are not apathetic at all, since they take part in “plebiscites of the market” day after day through their choice of consumer goods. On the other hand, Strauss continued, "those who hold on to regulating common affairs in political instead of market-economy channels will sooner or later not be able to avoid fundamentally questioning the market doctrine - or persist in self-contradiction." Because "the scope of democratic co-determination options [is] limited [...] where the functions affecting the community are regulated privately ”. In a welfare state that has been reduced to a minimum , many services for the needy are provided as “works of charity ” by non-governmental institutions or individuals. For example, what many do not know, no needy person has a legal right to services from the local food bank .

After the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers bank and the resulting financial crisis , the number of market believers who believed that government intervention in economic activity was per se damaging decreased dramatically from 2007 onwards. In this only the decision of politicians to save banks through state intervention could prevent a collapse of the world economy. However, minarchist thinking is still widespread in some states . In response to a statement attributed to Chancellor Merkel during the coalition with the FDP that democracy had to be “in line with the market”, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung defended this view and contradicted the opinion of the opposition at the time that the market had to be in line with democracy. “Only a competition-driven market economy” (Jasper von Altenbockum draws this lesson “from more than sixty years of the Federal Republic”) “secures the resources of the welfare state. A democracy that is not 'in line with the market' must therefore be asked where it wants to get the strength and the means to achieve its goals. "

Role of the media

Another, not to be neglected, reason for disaffection with politics lies in the destabilizing effect of the behavior of the media, which destabilizes democracy. Due to their mediating position between politics and the citizens, they must be ascribed a share of responsibility for the chronic annoyance in parts of the public. In particular, the tendency towards predominantly negative reporting fuels the idea of a generally unfortunate situation as well as the apparently incurable political incompetence of leading politicians among many citizens. The emphasis on conflict and scandal in media reporting must be assessed as equally problematic. Politics is increasingly portrayed as a "quarrel", " zero-sum game " or as a poorly constructive cooperation of democratically elected representatives, although there are often unanimous resolutions in all parliaments. Uncovering scandals has an important function to preserve democracy, but frequent reports of scandals can lead to a loss of confidence in politics among indignant citizens. In the age of “social media”, the possibility for everyone to disseminate information of questionable quality leads to a comprehensive system of disinformation. The ideal of the “responsible citizen”, whose realization is vital for a democracy, is becoming increasingly difficult to translate into reality.

The growing tendency of many media to increase the proportion of entertaining, superficial reports (e.g. home stories, private lives of politicians etc.) at the expense of substantial information, leads to an increase in the number of "apathetically satisfied" people. This encourages an increased demand for entertainment programs (keyword: escapism ). According to Hans J. Kleinsteuber , the introduction of commercial television was one of the main reasons that led young people to the fact that two thirds of them were now politically disinterested; "In private television there was sensation, gossip and gossip", "the world of politics", however, lives "on facts, figures and sober facts". Even today's media “infotainment” does not live up to this requirement for seriousness and quality, complained in a contribution on public television, which is itself not free from the deficiencies denounced. Apart from that, it is not only young people who are receptive to shallow, seemingly unrelated offers.

literature

Essays

Kai Arzheimer : Disenchantment with politics - a question of personality? The connection between personality factors and disaffectional attitudes. In: Siegfried Schumann, Harald Schoen (Ed.): Personality. A forgotten quantity of empirical social research. VS, Wiesbaden 2005, pp. 193-207. ( Manuscript version on kai-arzheimer.com ; PDF; 183 kB).
Peter Lösche: Endless party disaffection? Polemics against the complaints of German politicians, journalists, political scientists and constitutional lawyers. In: ZParl . 26, 1995, pp. 149-159.
Peter Lösche: Party State Bonn - Party State Weimar? On the role of parties in parliamentary democracy. In: Eberhard Kolb , Walter Mühlhausen (Hrsg.): Democracy in the crisis. Parties in the constitutional system of the Weimar Republic. Oldenbourg, Munich 1997, pp. 141-164.
Wolfgang Gaiser, Martine Gille, Winfried Krüger, Johann de Rijke: Disaffection with politics in East and West? In: From Politics and Contemporary History (APuZ). B 19-20 / 2000.
Brigitte Geißel, Virginia Penrose: Dynamics of Political Participation and Participation Research - Political Participation of Women and Men. In: gender ... politics ... online. 2003. ( online )
Hans-Joachim Nitzsche: Political disgust - my life in a bureaucratic madhouse. ISBN 978-3-8391-1338-7 .

Monographs

Kai Arzheimer: Disaffection with politics. Meaning, use and empirical relevance of a political science term. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 2002 ISBN 3-531-13797-2 . (PDF file; 1.2 MB)

Ulf C. Goettges, Martin Häusler: You should sell the voters for stupid - The 10 unwritten commandments of politics . Bastei Lübbe, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-404-60753-2 .

Iris Huth: Political disaffection: manifestations and causes as challenges for the political system and the political culture of the Federal Republic of Germany in the 21st century. Dissertation. University of Münster 2003. LIT, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-8183-0 (Politics and Participation, 3).

Gert Pickel: Youth and disenchantment with politics. Two cultures in Germany after unification. Leske + Budrich, Opladen 2002, ISBN 3-8100-3580-7 . (Series: Political Culture in the New Democracies of Europe. Volume 2).

14. Shell Youth Study: Youth 2002 - Between pragmatic idealism and robust materialism. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, ISBN 3-596-15849-4 .

Jens Wolling: Political disenchantment with the mass media? The influence of the media on citizens' attitudes towards politics. West German publishing house, Opladen 1999.

Philip Zeschmann: Ways out of the politicians and party disaffection . Democracy for a civil society . Pro-Universitate-Verlag, Sinzheim 2000, ISBN 3-932490-70-3 .

Web links

Wiktionary: disaffection with politics - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

↑ Silvia Janas / Siegfried Preiser: Lexicon of Psychology: Political disaffection . Spektrum.de . 2000

^ Klaus Christoph: Political disaffection . Federal Agency for Political Education . January 6, 2012

↑ Michael Eilfort: The non-voters. Abstention from voting as a form of voting behavior . Paderborn 1994, p. 38f.

↑ DWDS. The word information system for the German language in the past and present: disaffection, die . Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences

^ Ernst Fraenkel: Germany and the western democracies. 4th edition. Stuttgart 1968, p. 69ff.

^ Albrecht von Lucke : Democracy without a people . Sheets for German and international politics . July 2010

↑ Ross Campbell 2019 "Popular Support for Democracy in Unified Germany: Critical Democrats". London: Palgrave. ISBN 978-3-030-03791-8

↑ Thomas Petersen / Dominik Hierlemann / Robert B. Vehrkamp / Christopher Wratil: Split democracy: political participation and satisfaction with democracy before the 2013 federal election . Institute for Demoscopy Allensbach / Bertelsmann Foundation 2013

↑ Dieter Fuchs / Edeltraud Roller: Satisfaction with the functioning of democracy in Germany . Federal Agency for Civic Education. 2016

^ Oskar Niedermayer: The social composition of the party memberships . Federal Agency for Civic Education. October 7, 2017

↑ Research group Weltanschauungen in Germany (forwid): Berufsprestige 2013-2016 . 2nd February 2017

↑ Young people are more interested in politics again . Time online . October 13, 2015

↑ Thomas Grüter: Why voting is not profitable - and why democracy works anyway . BLOG: Thought Workshop - the psychology of irrational thinking. Spectrum of science . September 12th, 2013

^ Foundation for Future Issues - an initiative by British American Tobacco : What Germans Expect for 2016 - Return of "German Fear" , Research News, 265, year 36, December 16, 2015.

↑ Rainer-Olaf Schultze: Stability and Change: How Much Political Participation Does Democracy Need? . Political Science Portal. 3rd August 2017

^ Dieter Rucht / Roland Roth: Movement Republic of Germany . In: Sheets for German and international politics . September 2008

↑ ^a ^b Robert Vehrkamp: ball in. Future of democracy . Bertelsmann Foundation. 2013

↑ Johannes Heinrichs : Democracy Manifesto for the silent majority. The “Revolution of Democracy” in brief. Steno, Munich [u. a.] 2005, ISBN 954-449-201-1 online version (PDF; 1 MB)

↑ Germans are dissatisfied with democracy . Cicero . January 26, 2017

↑ The decline of the middle ground . taz.de. May 7, 2016

^ Seymour Martin Lipset: Sociology of Democracy . Neuwied am Rhein 1962 (Volume 12 of the series “Sociological Texts”), p. 157

↑ Christian Schlüter disaffection with democracy: Democracy lacks the next generation . fr.de. July 26, 2016

↑ Sonja Kock: Leaving Democracy? An empirical study on political participation with special consideration of the population in economically disadvantaged city districts . Dissertation. Faculty of Social and Cultural Studies at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen. 2014, p. 23 (32)

^ Colin Crouch: Post Democracy . Frankfurt / Main. 2008, p. 10.

↑ Sonja Kock: Leaving Democracy? An empirical study on political participation with special consideration of the population in economically disadvantaged city districts . Dissertation. Faculty of Social and Cultural Studies at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen. 2014, p. 24f. (33 f.)

↑ Wolfgang Merkel: Future of Democracy: Crisis? Crisis! . faz.net. May 5, 2013

↑ Harald Strauss: Depoliticized abstinence or political participation qua consumption? A desideratum for researching political engagement in neoliberalism . In: magazine discurs . Edition 2014/2015. P. 55f.

↑ Jasper von Altenbockum: Market-conform democracy? Or a democratic market? . faz.net . April 15, 2012

↑ Schleswig-Holstein-Journal of October 16, 2010

[1] Silvia Janas / Siegfried Preiser: Lexicon of Psychology: Political disaffection . Spektrum.de . 2000

[2] Klaus Christoph: Political disaffection . Federal Agency for Political Education . January 6, 2012

[3] Michael Eilfort: The non-voters. Abstention from voting as a form of voting behavior . Paderborn 1994, p. 38f.

[4] DWDS. The word information system for the German language in the past and present: disaffection, die . Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences

[5] Ernst Fraenkel: Germany and the western democracies. 4th edition. Stuttgart 1968, p. 69ff.

[6] Albrecht von Lucke : Democracy without a people . Sheets for German and international politics . July 2010

[7] Ross Campbell 2019 "Popular Support for Democracy in Unified Germany: Critical Democrats". London: Palgrave. ISBN 978-3-030-03791-8