The Leadership Secrets of Bismarck

In 1848, a wave popular revolutions rocked Europe's authoritarian regimes. How those upheavals played out holds lessons for the future of the Arab Spring.

Over the last two decades, a distinctive regime type has emerged across the developing world, one that scholars have come to call competitive authoritarianism. This sort of political system allows for the contestation of power among different social groups, but with so many violations of electoral fairness and so little regard for liberal norms that it cannot be called a true democracy. From Russia to Peru, Cambodia to Cameroon, such regimes are now located in almost every region of the world, and how they develop will determine the shape of the twenty-first century.

One of the best ways to gain insight into the future paths of these political systems, ironically, is to look backward rather than forward, because the past can be prologue. Wilhelmine Germany is a particularly interesting point of comparison, because it had many similar characteristics. Like many of these regimes, it, too, experienced late, rapid growth and social transformation. It, too, developed a competitive form of politics that fell short of full-blown democracy. And potentially like some of today's emerging powers, Germany had a domestic political crisis that was capable of shaking the world.

The larger-than-life figure who presided over Germany's rise was Otto von Bismarck, foreign minister and minister-president of Prussia during the 1860s, architect of German unification in 1871, and chancellor of a unified German empire from 1871 to 1890. Given Bismarck's role in German history, a vast amount has already been written about him, so one might question what more there is to say. However, in Bismarck: A Life, Jonathan Steinberg, a respected historian with a long career at Cambridge University and the University of Pennsylvania, has produced a first-rate biography that combines a standard historical narrative with an intriguing account of Bismarck as a personality.

Incorporating reflections from the man himself, as well as from his friends, enemies, and coworkers, Bismarck offers a fresh and compelling portrait of a fascinating character. Steinberg shows how the German political climate Bismarck fostered -- marked by deference to authoritarianism, an aversion to compromise, and reactionary antimodernism -- contributed to the country's disastrous course in the decades after Bismarck's fall from power. And in doing so, he indirectly sheds light on the prospects of competitive authoritarian regimes in the contemporary era. The thing to keep an eye on, it turns out, is less the character of the classes rising from below than the willingness of elites at the top to loosen their grip on power.

BISMARCK'S POLITICAL GENIUS

Bismarck was born in 1815 to that stratum of Prussian nobility, the Junkers, that combined hardscrabble farming in the rye belt east of the Elbe River with an ethic of disciplined and often militarized service to the Hohenzollerns, Prussia's ruling family. He was educated, witty, and highly intelligent (although not an intellectual). Like many Junkers, his politics were reactionary; he was antidemocratic, antisocialist, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic.

Bismarck first rose to prominence during the revolutions of 1848, when nationalist and democratic uprisings challenged Europe's political status quo. As a new member of the Prussian legislature, he forcefully defended the monarchy's desire for unfettered executive power. Thanks in part to his maneuvering then and later, the dynasty survived the tumult and went on to rule for seven more decades -- a period during which Prussia unified Germany around it and blossomed into an industrial and military powerhouse.

Germany's economic development was relatively late by European standards. Social scientists such as Alexander Gerschenkron and Barrington Moore have noted that its embrace of capitalist modernity and rise to power were predicated on a new pattern of authoritarian development -- in Moore's words, a "revolution from above." This meant using industrial policy to push development in those sectors that enhanced state power and simultaneously suppressing or co-opting all political opposition. In order to catch up with the more advanced economies of the West, the government protected heavy industries essential to the nation's military strength, as well as Junker agriculture, with tariffs.

The transformation of a largely agrarian and rural society into an industrial and urban one always involves major changes in social structure. Social change, in turn, almost inevitably leads to the rise of new political actors demanding a voice and a share of power. Although Steinberg does not dwell on the larger socioeconomic or theoretical picture, he does a good job of presenting the specifics of how this story played out in the German case. The success of the German economy led to the expansion of three groups: the bourgeoisie, the middle class, and the working class. These groups challenged Junker dominance through the Catholic Center Party, various liberal parties, and the Social Democratic Party. Ultimately, following Germany's defeat in World War I, these parties would abolish the empire and declare a republic. But Bismarck, by playing these forces off one another and selectively granting policy concessions, managed to keep them at bay for decades.

Font: www.foreignaffairs.com

ING Verbs

By: Karen Maguilbray

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