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This study begins with an examination of the secular institutional transformation of East Germany's local government since the early 1990s following the collapse of the communist regime & during the process of German unification. In its spectacular mix of institutional demolition & reconstruction this transformation bore many traces of what Joseph Schumpeter has called 'creative destruction.' The article addresses the 'performance' of the newly created political & administrative structures of local government a decade after transformation. It argues that the performance of East Germany's institutions & actors has attained the 'normalcy' of West German administrative practice remarkably rapidly. Finally, East Germany's institutional development is considered within a comparative perspective, focusing on other Central & East European countries, particularly Poland & Hungary. 5 Tables. Adapted from the source document.

Many thought that the 'German question', that had shaped European history so catastrophically in the last century, had been solved for good in 1990. And the last elections seemed to confirm that Germany was on the road to 'normalcy'. However, at the beginning of the new century, many see Germany as a problem case in Europe. This raises the question about the future of Germany and the performance of the incumbent government. The book addresses these issues by examining the policies and politics of the Red-Green government and by putting recent changes and developments in this country in a long-term perspective.

In the mid nineteenth century a process began that appears, from a present-day perspective, to have been the first wave of economic globalization. Within a few decades global economic integration reached a level that equaled, and in some respects surpassed, that of the present day. This book describes the interpenetration of the German economy with an emerging global economy before the First World War, while also demonstrating the huge challenge posed by globalization to the society and politics of the German Empire. The stakes for both the winners and losers of the intensifying world market