French and the lacking interest in ‘‘Smaller European Democracies.’’ The project
under this title, developed by Stein Rokkan and Hans Daalder, was seminal for my
own studies on parliaments, parties, interest groups, and trade unions; (c) The
study of institutions without reference to policy outcomes.
My own academic socialization in political science was aVected by American
theoretical developments in two waves. As a ‘‘true disciple’’ of an old institution-
alist, Carl J. Friedrich, I carefully followed the lectures at Harvard University of
Friedrich, V. O. Key, W. Y. Elliott, and McCloskey. The new developments, however,
took place in the sociology department. Two German students in 1961 – 2 went to
the courses of Talcott Parsons: Niklas Luhmann and myself. Only the former
became a true disciple of Parsons. Institutionalists like myself rather felt a subver-
sive joy of pilgrimage to MIT in order to study with Lasswell (teaching as a visiting
professor) and Karl W. Deutsch. The second personal involvement took place when
I was a visiting professor at Stanford University and underwent the inXuences of
my colleagues, Gabriel Almond, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Heinz Eulau. My
work was shaped by a moderate deviation from ‘‘paleo-institutionalism’’ in a turn
to sociological views in the tradition of Karl Deutsch and Martin Lipset.
In Germany ‘‘the state’’ was no longer a subject for political scientists like Dolf
Sternberger and Carl J. Friedrich who ran the Heidelberg Institute. The state after
Nazi rule was considered as the incarnation of misled nationalism. Institutions
were kept free from ‘‘identity politics’’ which only in the age of postmodernity
became a new concern of political science. Identity building was promoted in a
rational way, via ‘‘constitutional patriotism’’ in German theories from Sternberger
to Habermas. ‘‘The state’’ of the older German ‘‘Staatslehre’’ was no longer
a concern. The problem with state institutions was rather an almost silly anglo-
phile bias in studies of parliamentary systems and electoral laws, initiated by F. A.
Hermens, D. Sternberger, and others. Institutional theory was frequently depen-
dent on political reforms. There was a period when the ‘‘Grand Coalition’’ in
Germany ( 1966 – 9 )—with advice from many political scientists and jurists—
seriously planned to introduce the British relative majority electoral law, in the
hope that only a two-party system would survive. But even early political culture
studies had a certain bias in favor of the ‘‘Anglo-Saxon’’ model. With Almond’s
neglect of the consociational democracies which he lumped into one category
of hybrids between the British and the ‘‘continental’’ model, consisting of the
Benelux countries and Scandinavia, the younger generation had to take issue.
Arend Lijphart and Gerhard Lehmbruch—with whom I worked in an institute at
Tu ̈bingen—have enlightened me more than the traditional state-orientation of the
‘‘nestor’’ of German political science, Theodor Eschenburg, then my colleague at
Tu ̈bingen (cf. Daalder 1997 ,227V). The younger generation on the continent
discovered the traditions of ‘‘consociationalism,’’ which diverges from British
winner-takes-all concepts.
754 klaus von beyme