Accommodation or ‘cleansing’: Germany's state employees from the old regime

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Abstract
Two theoretical traditions within comparative political analysis suggest very different answers to the question of what post‐transformation East Central European states should do with bureaucrats from the old regime. A state‐centred Weberian ‘competence’ institutionalism suggests a de‐politicised accommodation and retention of former officials. A society‐centred timing/intensity/mobilisation perspective suggests a politicised ‘cleansing’ of bureaucrats. Applied to the Federal Republic of Germany, the successor regime to the GDR, each perspective is found to be wanting. In their place, this essay offers a distinctly German statist ‘political’ institutionalism combined with a distinctly Western German societalist politicisation.