How far do you agree that there was very little political dissent and active challenge to the governments of the FRG throughout the years 1949-89?

Introduction

• Political dissent = expression of dislike of aspect of party/govt, so turn to opposition parties

• Active challenge = organised attempts to pressure, disrupt or force the government to change policies

• Criteria = scale, frequency and political impact

• There was not very little, but the dissent + challenge was somewhat inconsequential

Paragraph 1

• Across the period, radical right and left produced strong results

• 1949 - Over 30% voted for parties other than the CDU/CSU and SPD

• 1969 - NPD won 4.3% of votes, coming close to 5% threshold for Bundestag representation

• 1987 - Greens won 44 Bundestag seats

Paragraph 2

• Alternative parties remained as minorities

• 1957 - CDU/CSU won 50.2% of the votes

• 1972 - CDU/CSU and SPD received 90.7% of the vote (turnout 91.1%)

• 1980 - Greens obtained only 1.5% of the vote

Paragraph 3

• Certainly periods of substantial active challenge (1967-69 + 1980s)

• 1968 - 100k students and workers marched in Bonn against the Emergency Laws

• 1969 - September strikes spread to 140k workers across 69 workplaces

• 1983 - Peace demonstrations draw 1.3m

Paragraph 4

• The severity of active challenge was limited in its ability to overturn governments

• 1968 - Protestors failed to overturn Emergency Laws

• 1981 peace demonstrations - 60% West Germans didn’t want missiles deployed but they did anyway

• 1980-89 - 600k working days lost bc of strikes, 1.2m in 70s indicates it is episodic