62 Habermas: An intellectual biography
Habermas interpreted the 1957 elections as an example of how a
form of social science – market research – supported the “man-
aged integration” of society from above.^11 Once a “... critical prin-
ciple wielded by the public, publicity has been transformed into a
principle of managed integration (wielded by staging agencies).”^12
Of these “staging agencies,” Habermas singled out “... the admin-
istration, special-interest groups, and above all, the parties.”^13 To
Habermas, “the manipulative use... of the empirical results of
survey research”^14 was responsible for the Christian Democratic
Union’s (CDU’s) victory. The CDU expanded its proportion of the
vote from 45.2 percent in 1953 to 50.2 percent in 1957.^15
In a magazine article, “The Federal Republic – An Elective
Monarchy?” Habermas argued that independent voters tend to be
those who know and care the least and that the CDU in its 1961 cam-
paign was exploiting the latest marketing and advertising techniques
to mobilize these “unpolitical” voters.^16 “Scientifically-led marketing
makes political advertising into a component of a consumer culture
for the un-political [citizen].”^17 Compared with Social Democratic
Party (SPD) voters, CDU voters were in his estimate “... to
a higher degree pre-politically or wholly unpolitically motivated.”^18
Habermas was wrestling with a trend common to all the Western
democracies at this time, namely, the splitting of the electorate into
an active minority and an apathetic majority.^19 In the context of
declining ideological differences between the major parties, “... each
party tries to draw as much as possible from this reservoir of theOehler, Friedrich Weltz (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1961), 14; “On the Concept of
Political Participation,” in Student und Politik (Students and Politics hereafter).(^11) Habermas, Strukturwandel, 307; Transformation, 207.
(^12) Ibid.
(^13) Ibid.
(^14) Habermas, Strukturwandel, 323; Transformation, 219–20.
(^15) U. W. Kitzinger, German Electoral Politics: A Study of the 1957 Campaign
(Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1960 ), 67ff.
(^16) Habermas, “Die Bundesrepublik – ein Wahlmonarchie?” Magnum: Die
Zeitschrift für das Moderne Leben. Sonderheft: Woher-Wohin. Bilanz der
Bundesrepublik (Köln: 1961), 26–9.
(^17) Ibid.
(^18) Ibid.
(^19) He cites in this connection Lipset, Political Man, especially part 2; Morris
Janowitz et al., eds. Political Behavior: A Reader in Theory and Research
(Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1956 ); and Paul Lazarsfeld et al., eds. Voting: A
Study of Opinion-Formation in a Political Campaign (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1954 ).