1 Gerhard Lehmbruch (New School for Social Research and University of Konstanz) The Process of Regime Change in East Germany 1 1. Causes of disintegration of the GDR 2. Social forces and motivational syndromes in the East German revolution 3. The irruption of the West German party sytem 4. Scenarios for unification and their implications for economic policy 5. Problems of instititutional reconstruction In recent years, cross-national studies of processes of political regime change have repeatedly been undertaken by students of comparative politics: Thus, in particular, of the breakdown of European democracies between the two world wars, and of the more recent developments in regions where military and/or authoritarian dictatorships gave way to democracy. What distinguishes our present subject is not simply that we still lack much of the historical information which usually becomes available as time passes. In the research just mentioned, regime change became the object of inquiry only after it was completed through the installation of a new political order. The collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe so far is different. These countries have moved into a transitory stage of democratic institution building. But this is far from being achieved, and there remains a lot of uncertainty about which shape the new democratic regimes will finally take. There is, of course, one important distinction between East Germany and most other East European countries (the Baltic countries excepted): The fundamental pattern of statehood was a constant that survived the establishment of the communist regime as well as its collapse and the emergence of a new democratic framework. Hence, in these countries the problem of the national state is not at issue, and considerable institutional continuity can be expected when the cycle of regime change will be completed. In the case of the German Democratic Republic the range of analytical and predictive uncertainty is much greater. Of course it is now certain that the GDR will not survive as a separate state but will surrender its political identity in a united Germany. But I want to warn against imagining the future Germany simply as a sort of spatial extension of the Federal Republic. Some in West Germany even begin to wonder whether not also the history of their state, as it has developed over forty years, is now over. 1 For presentation at the Workshop "Gorbachov and the Germans", New School for Social Research, New York, May 10 and 11, 1990