Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: The Theoretical Parameters

This chapter explores the “staying power” of political culture, based on classic theoretical works addressing socialization processes under authoritarian regimes. It draws on frameworks advanced by Karl Mannheim, Barrington Moore, Jr., Abraham Maslow and B.F. Skinner, inter alia to explain the “concentric nature of identity,” differentiating between a state-imposed GDR-identity and a surprising array of everyday East German or “peer culture” identities which have proven to be quite resilient over time. It then revisits Albert O. Hirschman’s original exit/voice/loyalty paradigm, revived by social scientists after 1989/1990 to explain the sudden collapse of the GDR. The author contends that most scholars have failed to account for other forms of exit and voice that ultimately contributed to the GDR’s collapse, while their neglect of loyalty has limited their ability to address new problems and tensions between Easterners and Westerners thirty years into unification.

1. 1.

   The English translation stems from Jost Hermand and Robert C. Holub, eds. 1982. Heinrich Heine—Prose and Poetry, German Library Collection, Vol. 32. New York: Continuum: 231–297.

2. 2.

   Karl Mannheim. 1970 ed. Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, trans.: Edward Shils. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World; Helmut Fogt. 1982. Politische Generationen: Empirische Bedeutung und theoretisches Modell. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag; Joyce Marie Mushaben. 1998. From Post-Wall to Post-War Generations: Changing Attitudes towards the National Question and NATO in the Federal Republic of Germany. Boulder: Westview; Adriana Lettrari, Christian Nestler and Nadja Troi-Boeck, eds. 2016. Die Generation der Wendekinder: Elaboration eines Forschungsfeldes. Wiesbaden: Springer.

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   Joyce Marie Mushaben. 1989. “On Germany, Old Models don’t help,” Christian Science Monitor, December 5; “East German Elections: D-Mark über älles,” Christian Science Monitor, March 23, 1990; “Dissent and Faith in the GDR,” Christian Science Monitor, May 2, 1990; and “German Unification: Haste makes Waste,” Christian Science Monitor, August 27, 1990.

4. 4.

   Barrington Moore, Jr. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press, 486.

5. 5.

   Archie Brown and Jack Gray, eds. 1977. Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States. New York: Macmillan Press, 1. By 1952, anthropologists employed over a hundred definitions of “culture”; Brown and Gray delineate four types: (1) a unified culture reflecting substantial consensus among all segments of society; (2) a dominant culture which coexists with various sub-cultures, “harnessing” local identities; (3) a dichotomous political culture and (4) a fragmented political culture, in which no dominant mode emerges, 5–8.

6. 6.

   Gabriel Almond, cited in Archie Brown, ed. 1984. Political Culture and Communist Studies. New York: Macmillan Press, 7.

7. 7.

   Frank Parkin, cited by Brown and Gray, Political Culture, 6.

8. 8.

   Moore, Social Origins, 486.

9. 9.

   Brown and Gray, Political Culture, 4–5.

10. 10.

    Mary McAuley. 1977. “Political Culture and Communist Politics: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back,” in Political Culture, 23.

11. 11.

    The term “dominant political culture,” used by Brown, McAuley and Rytlewski is misleading, insofar as the political preferences of das Volk did not determine the contours of GDR culture. “Majoritarian culture” is a more appropriate term for what is implicit in the idea of peer culture. Cf. Christiane Lemke.1989. “Eine politische Doppelkultur—Sozialisation im Zeichen konkurrierender Einflüsse,” 81–93, and Ralf Rytlewski. 1989. “Ein neues Deutschland? Merkmale, Differenzierungen und Wandlungen in der politischen Kultur der DDR,” 11–28. Both in Hans-Georg Wehling, ed., Politische Kultur in der DDR. Stuttgart/Berlin: Kohlhammer.

12. 12.

    My analysis of West German identity drew on Karl Mannheim. 1928. “Das Problem der Generationen.” Reprinted in Ludwig von Friedeburg, ed. 1985. Jugend in der modernen Gesellschaft. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. I was also inspired by Krysia Yardley and Terry Honess, eds. 1987. Self and Identity. Psychosocial Perspectives. Chichester, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

13. 13.

    Mannheim, Man and Society, 23–24.

14. 14.

    Mushaben, From Post-war to Post-wall Generations.

15. 15.

    Karl W. Deutsch. 1953 (republished in 1969). Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality, Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

16. 16.

    Abraham Maslow. 1954. Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper, 83.

17. 17.

    Maslow, Motivation and Personality, 91–92.

18. 18.

    Maslow, Motivation and Personality, 91.

19. 19.

    Hans-Joachim Maaz. 1990. Der Gefuhlsstau: Ein Psychogramm der DDR. Berlin: Argon Verlag; Wolfgang Engler. 1995. Die ungewollte Moderne: Ost-West Passage. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.

20. 20.

    Burrhus Frederic Skinner. 1983. “Selection by Consequences,” In A Matter of Consequences. New York: Knopf, 51.

21. 21.

    Skinner, A Matter of Consequences, 55–56.

22. 22.

    Skinner, A Matter of Consequences, 55. Reshaping behavior is more likely to occur on the basis of a “graded series” of reinforcements.

23. 23.

    Skinner, A Matter of Consequences, 53–54. Humans adapt in response to three types of contingencies: natural selection (biological); reinforcement (psychological); and those maintained by the social environment (anthropological).

24. 24.

    Skinner, A Matter of Consequences, 54. He admits that “what is good for the species or culture may be bad for the individual,” 60.

25. 25.

    Skinner, A Matter of Consequences, 54.

26. 26.

    Skinner counters (63): “We tend to regard ourselves as initiating agents only because we know or remember so little about our genetic and environmental histories….”

27. 27.

    Skinner observes: “Through behavior modification we are said to intervene in the lives of others and manipulate them, and whether we should do so is an ethical question.” See “The Contrived Reinforcer,” 73.

28. 28.

    Skinner, A Matter of Consequences, 177–178.

29. 29.

    Skinner, A Matter of Consequences, 178.

30. 30.

    Logan, cited in Yardley and Honess, Self and Identity, 13.

31. 31.

    Kenneth J. Gergen. 1987. “Toward Self as Relationship,” in Yardley and Honess, 53.

32. 32.

    Sheldon Stryker. 1987. “Identity Theory: Developments and Extensions,” in Yardley and Honess, 97.

33. 33.

    Mildred A. Schwarz. 1967. Public Opinion and Canadian Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 9.

34. 34.

    Alexander and Margret Mitscherlich. 1967. Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern. Grundlagen kollektiven Verhaltens. Munich: Piper.

35. 35.

    The Mitscherlichs argue: “… a leap forward for one’s identity can only take place where the id development is cultivated from the beginning of life and where the individual possesses significant ego-functions.” Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern, 216.

36. 36.

    Herbert C. Kelman. 1969. “Patterns of Personal Involvement in the National System: A Social-Psychological Analysis of Political Legitimacy,” 284. In James N. Rosenau, ed., International Politics and Foreign Policy. New York: Free Press.

37. 37.

    Kelman, “Patterns of Personal Involvement,” 284 ff.

38. 38.

    The essence of nationhood lies in shared systems of social communication and economic interchange, linked to a power-center able to compel cohesiveness among citizen-members. See Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication.

39. 39.

    Kelman, “Patterns of Personal Involvement,” 285.

40. 40.

    Kelman, “Patterns of Personal Involvement,” 285.

41. 41.

    Albert O. Hirschman. 1970. Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hirschman admits that many assumptions regarding organizational and/or political rationality rest upon a model of perfect competition, although most real-world cases are far from perfect.

42. 42.

    Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, 1–2.

43. 43.

    See Albert O. Hirschman. 1993. “Exit, Voice and the Fate of the German Democratic Republic. An Essay in Conceptual History. World Politics 45:173–202; Detlef Pollack. 1990. “Das Ende einer Organisations-gesellschaft.” Zeitschrift für Soziologie 19 (4): 292–307; Rogers Brubaker. 1990. “Frontier Theses: Exit, Voice and Loyalty in East Germany,” Migration World 18 (3–4): 12–17; and Steven Pfaff. 2006. Exit-Voice Dynamics and the Collapse of East Germany: The Crisis of Leninism and the Revolution of 1989. Durham NC: Duke University Press.

44. 44.

    Regarding dynamic processes inherent in the institutional field itself, see Shirley Terreberry, 1968. “The Evolution of Organizational Environments.” Administrative Science Quarterly 12 (4): 590–613.

45. 45.

    Terreberry, 6. Slack implies that “development depends not so much on finding optimal combinations for given resources and factors of production as on calling forth and enlisting for development purposes resources and abilities that are hidden, scattered or badly utilized.” See Richard Cyert and James March. 1963. A Behavioral Theory of the Fir. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc..

46. 46.

    Hirschman shares Almond and Verba’s reservations regarding “the civic culture,” substantiating Kelman’s distinctions between sentimental and instrumental attachments to the nation-state.

47. 47.

    A. O. Hirschman. 1958. The Strategy of Economic Development. New Haven: Yale University Press, 13. Non-participating members of a given system are rarely randomly distributed. The “civic culture” model relies on participation by upper-class, white male elites, who excluded women and minorities. See Carole Pateman. 1980. “The Civic Culture: A Philosophical Critique”: 57–102. In Gabriel A. Almond and Sydney Verba, eds., The Civic Culture Revisited. Boston/Toronto: Little, Brown & Co.

48. 48.

    Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, 4.

49. 49.

    Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, 4.

50. 50.

    Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, 24–32.

51. 51.

    Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, 107–108.

52. 52.

    Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, 37.

53. 53.

    Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, 37–38.

54. 54.

    Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, 38.

55. 55.

    Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, 78.

56. 56.

    Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, 79.

57. 57.

    Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, 81–82.

58. 58.

    A. James McAdams. 1985. East Germany and Détente: Building Authority after the Wall. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.

59. 59.

    McAdams, East Germany and Détente, 51.

60. 60.

    See “Kulturpolitik,” in Hartmut Zimmermann, ed. 1985. DDR Handbuch. Köln: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 770.

61. 61.

    The unconscious loyalist “is by definition free from felt discontent,” hence will not engage in voice. Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, 91.

62. 62.

    Ralf Dahrendorf, cited in Wolfgang Pollack. 1987. German Identity—Forty Years After Zero. Sankt Augustin: Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, 47.

63. 63.

    See Irene Böhme. 1982. Die da drüben. Sieben Kapitel DDR. Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag; Martin Ahrends, ed. 1989. Mein Leben: Teil Zwei. Ehemaliger DDR-Bürger in der Bundesrepublik. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch; and Volker Ronge. 1985. Von drüben nach hüben. DDR-Bürger im Westen. Wuppertal: Hartmann + Petit.

64. 64.

    Hirschman, “Exit, Voice and the Fate of the German Democratic Republic,” 177.

65. 65.

    Hirschman, “Exit, Voice and Fate,” 177.

66. 66.

    Hirschman, “Exit, Voice and Fate,” 178.

67. 67.

    John D. Steinbruner. 1974. A Cybernetic Theory of Decision. New Dimensions of Political Analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 116.

68. 68.

    Steinbruner, A Cybernetic Theory, 175.

69. 69.

    Steinbruner, A Cybernetic Theory, 198.

70. 70.

    Ariane Rieker, Annett Schwarz and Dirk Schneider. 1990. STASI Intim: Gespräche mit ehemaligen MfS Mitarbeitern. Leipzig: Forum Verlag.

71. 71.

    Rieker et all, STASI Intim, 181.

72. 72.

    Horst-Günter Kessler and Jürgen Miermeister. 1983. Vom ‘Großen Knast’ ins ‘Paradis’? DDR-Bürger in der Bundesrepublik. Reinbeck: Rowohlt.

73. 73.

    Hirschman, “Exit, Voice and Fate,” 186.

74. 74.

    Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, 108.

75. 75.

    Regulations were revised in November 1987 and early 1989. See “DDR Verordnung über Reisen und Ausreisen.” Deutschland Archiv, 22 (1), January 1989. This decision was part of a larger scheme to accumulate hard currency, since many citizens were “bought out” by the Bonn government at “going rates” based on their educational and professional qualifications.

76. 76.

    Landolf Scherzer. 1988. Der Erste: Protokoll einer Begegnung. Rudolstadt: Greifenverlag, 1988.

77. 77.

    Anordnung zur Sicherung des Geheimschutzes auf dem Gebiet der Umweltdaten of November 16, 1982. See Peter Wensierski and Wolfgang Büscher. 1981. Beton ist Beton. Zivilisationskritik aus der DDR. Hattingen: edition transit; and Peter Wensierski. 1986. Von unten nach oben wächst gar nichts. Umweltzerstörung und Protest in der DDR. Frankfurt/Main: Fischer.

78. 78.

    Samuel Johnson, cited by Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, 21.

79. 79.

    Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, 126.

80. 80.

    Hirschman, “Exit, Voice and Fate,” 193.

81. 81.

    Peter Förster and Günter Roski. 1990. DDR zwischen Wende und Wahl. Meinungsforscher analysieren den Umbruch. Berlin: LinksDruck, 161ff.

82. 82.

    Regarding its accidental nature, see Elizabeth Pond. 1990. After the Wall. American Policy Toward Germany. New York: Priority Press.

83. 83.

    Hirschman, “Exit Voice and Fate,” 187.

84. 84.

    Kohl failed to consult with Bundestag members or NATO partners prior to issuing the proclamation, though his proposal touched directly on Four Power prerogatives.

85. 85.

    This charge was leveled publicly during the 1994 constitutional revisions process, in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on July 2, 1994.

86. 86.

    Hirschman, “Exit, Voice and Fate,” 185–186.

87. 87.

    Joyce Marie Mushaben, 2018. “The Reluctant Feminist: Angela Merkel and the Modernization of Gender Politics in Germany.” Femina Politica 27 (2): 83–94.

Authors and Affiliations

1. BMW Center for German & European Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., WA, USA

   Joyce Marie Mushaben

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