The SPD after Brandt: Problems of integration in a changing Urban society
Since 1982, the electoral fortunes of the SPD have followed a downward trend, accompanied by a pervasive malaise and uncertainty regarding coalitions with the Greens. The strategic choice before the SPD is mirrored by the analogous dilemma of the CDU/CSU with regard to the FDP. The problems of integrating the ‘two or more SPDs’ in a rapidly changing urban society are aggravated by the sectarian New Left in the big cities. Only a new consensus based on widely popular themes can lead the SPD back into power.
The West German social democrats in opposition 1982–86
Entering opposition, political parties face tasks of renewal and regeneration, the success of which is usually a prerequisite of their return to government office. For the SPD (1982–86), these tasks were: programmatic renewal, the consolidation of internal party cohesion, the restoration of relations with organised labour and elite regeneration. In addition to these tasks of structural renewal, opposition parties must evolve a parliamentary strategy and undertake a realignment towards key groups in the electorale. It is argued here that the SPD embarked on the exercise of renewal and regeneration with more emphasis on continuity than on change. Adopting a short‐term perspective on a return to government, the party looked to makeshift expedients instead of long‐term solutions, postponing change and sidestepping controversial or divisive questions. Consequently, in the wake of its electoral defeat in January 1987, the party faces a ‘crisis of opposition’ as acute as in 1983, if not more so.
Hobbes and the Reception of Leviathan
Although there has been much discussion of the reception of Hobbes’s work, Hobbes’s response to his own reception has rarely received much consideration. This article looks at Hobbes’s engagements with his critics. Far from being rearguard actions by a philosopher under siege, or disingenuous attempts to curry favour with those in power, they can be read as moments when Hobbes in fact sought to convert what he saw as the “truth of speculation into the utility of practice.”