INEQUALITY AND SOCIAL-POLICY IN THE NEW B UNDESLANDER - SYSTEM COMPARISON AND CUMULATIVE SOCIAL-POLITICAL PERSEVERANCE

The article deals with the disparities in the interpretation of GDR so ciety and East German attitudes by social scientists from Eastern and Western Germany and inquires into the causes of the declining acceptan ce of the economic system of the Federal Republic of Germany in the ne w German states. The essay is oriented in a conceptional frame; work, in which the reasons for the changes in attitudes are thought to lie i n the transformation experience on the one hand, and the comparison of political and economic systems on the other. The convergence of value orientation and judgment of satisfaction in East and West Germany is not seen to result from the process of unification, but is instead int erpreted to be a result of the economic situation as a whole and the c ontradictions inherent in the present system, which require solutions for the whole of Germany.