posted on 2017-04-21, 08:50authored byFrank M. Häge
Imperial Germany is a prominent historical case in the study of Western Europe’s political
development. This paper investigates the number and content of political conflict dimensions
from the foundation of the modern German state in 1866 to the end of Bismarck’s reign as
Chancellor in 1890. Methodologically, it applies dimension-reducing statistical methods to a
novel dataset of content-coded parliamentary roll call votes. The analysis suggests that the
emergence of the Catholic Centre Party in 1871 permanently transformed the conflict space
from a single liberal-conservative divide to a two-dimensional space that distinguished
positions on socio-economic issues and regime matters, respectively. The fact that positions
on redistributive and regime issues were not aligned implies that theories stressing economic
inequality as a driver for regime change are of limited applicability. Instead, the case of
Imperial Germany highlights the importance of cross-cutting non-economic societal
cleavages and the role of societal and political organisations in drawing attention to and
perpetuating these divisions.