Peter Alexis Gourevitch 95Nevertheless, a different outcome—low tariffs on both types of goods—also
would have been compatible with an economic interest group explanation. Logrolling
could also have linked up those parts of industry and agriculture that had a plausible
interest in low tariffs: finished goods manufacturers, shippers and dockworkers,
labor, professionals, shopkeepers, consumers, and farmers of the West and South.
This coalition may even have been a majority of the electorate, and at certain
moments managed to impose its policy preferences. Under Chancellor Georg von
Caprivi (1890–1894), reciprocal trade treaties were negotiated and tariffs lowered.
Why did this coalition lose over the long ran? Clearly because it was weaker, but
of what did this weakness consist?
Political Explanations
One answer looks to aspects of the political system which favored protectionist
forces at the expense of free traders: institutions (weighted voting, bureaucracy);
personalities who intervened on one side or another; the press of other issues
(socialism, taxation, constitutional reform, democratization); and interest group
organization.
In all these domains, the protectionists had real advantages. The Junkers especially
enjoyed a privileged position in the German system. They staffed or influenced
the army, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the educational system, and the Court.
The three-class voting system in Prussia, and the allocation of seats, helped
overrepresent them and propertied interests in general.
In the late 1870s, Bismarck and the emperor switched to the protectionists’
side. Their motives were primarily political. They sought to strengthen the basic
foundations of the conservative system (autonomy of the military and the executive
TABLE 1. Interests of Different Groups in Relation to Industrial and Agricultural
Tariffs (Germany)