POLITICAL TRANSFORMATIONS 81
eff ectively bolstered electoral support for right-wing populist parties. The
crisis in the CDU following its electoral defeat and Helmut Kohl’s resigna-
tion in 1998 therefore refl ected an international trend, but it had been de-
layed in the West German case by the party’s key role in the reunifi cation
process. As the party in government at the time, it was made responsible
for the fl ailing socioeconomic situation, and especially the ongoing un-
employment problem, but also for social austerity measures.
At the same time, Gerhard Schröder’s election marked a new kind of
pragmatism within the SPD in the wake of the demise of real existing so-
cialism that also departed from the leftist JuSo (Young Socialist) tradition.
As the so-called Schröder-Blair paper emphasized, the party distanced it-
self from neoliberalism as well as state intervention, which it had favored
in the past.
Thus, to a certain extent, it can be said that the era of the Red-Green
government was the capstone of the transformation of the 1970s. On the
one hand, this government accomplished the goals of the protest move-
ments, such as the nuclear phase-out, the reform of citizenship laws, and
guarantees of equality for minorities. On the other hand, it also pushed
through policies contrary to the peace movement, such as the deploy-
ment of German troops against Serbia. The Agenda 2010, which brought
social austerity measures, poignantly underscored this shift within the
Social Democratic and Green parties. Edgar Wolfrum thus referred to
the Red-Green government as “the dawn of a new era” that adopted old
policies while often boldly reshaping them. This paved the way for the
Greens to develop into a “key party,” at least in West Germany.^141 It was
not until after the ardent new social movements lost ground that their
political concerns met with a surprisingly broad, self-evident resonance
within society.
In comparison to the 1970s, German society appeared to be increas-
ingly apolitical from the late 1990s onward. Yet, reforms were introduced
without much fanfare that had once been demanded only by highly po-
liticized minorities. The majority of young people refused to serve in the
military, for example, while recycling and energy-saving measures be-
came widespread, and women began to take on an increasing number
of leading positions in politics, fi nance, and university education. The
emergence of an environmentally minded interventionist state cannot
account for these changes alone. Rather, the protest movements had
brought about a change of norms that even infl uenced supporters of the
CDU and CSU. In 1994, for example, the CDU even adopted the idea of an
“ecological market economy” in its party platform. Simultaneously, the
traditional middle-class parties experienced a kind of rebirth that no one