Germany and Turkey: Successful Governance as a Function of History (Part 2)

Mohammed Sultan - محمد سلطان

When I compared turkey to Germany, according to the World Bank data, I found that there is a huge gap between both. Germany through out the 18 years, from 1996 to 2014, is performing very well. The least score that Germany has had so far is approximately 0.5 in the political stability for 2003. On the other hand, the best score for Germany goes for the political stability and for the government effectiveness by having 1.9 in 1998. On a side note, I found that in 2003 Germany’s scores were dramatically dropped particularly in the criteria of Voice and Accountability, Political Stability, and Government Effectiveness (Index, Graphs).

According to my research, the landslide success behind Germany is an outcome of how the citizens, the society and the institutions reacted to the different calamities that Germany has been going through. For example, the institution along with the government do work harmoniously in a sense that do not compromise the importance of the opposition, yet holding the country’s interest as the top priority. Such integration between the different political thoughts and orientations, in my perspective, is the corner of stone of success, and that was done due to the consensus between the various parties and the culture on what I defined as ‘the major call’. It is the plan that all of the society agrees upon to establish because each member of the state will get a benefit out of its establishment.

The first aspect of the German renaissance is the orientation of focusing on the aspect of human security, where the citizens and Human Rights are given the top priority over other aspects. In 1998, Germany issued a historical decree stating that the government should compensate the slave-workers under the Nazi party (Helbert, 1997 & Kirschbaum, 2007). In fact, in the same year, the World Bank data shows that the voice and accountability's score was one the least in the German history, yet it improved significantly over the coming year. Such great attention giving the agency to the citizens has been always derived out of the notion that legitimacy is only based on the peoples' consent. For example, the one party system under Hitler in 1923, when he tried to lead a coup, was based upon the one-voice methodology where the military man in charge of the country was designated for planning and implementing everything for the country (Aigner, 1985).

Accordingly, the lack of counseling and the absence of the political plurality accounted for the landslide defeat of Germany in the 1940s driving the country to be split up into pieces. The modern history of Germany would say a lot about such dreadful experience because Germany –especially- after the formation of the European community, in 1951, knew that having a new birth would be the only solution out of this dilemma, and being hostile against others, even if they are enemies, would result in political and economic failure; at least for the current time (European Union Website). Therefore, Germany began to take serious steps showing its readiness and capability to be a peaceful state based on rule of law. Based upon the World Bank data, Germany scored very highly in 2006, but what was the reason behind that? Before answering this question I would like to spot the light on year 2000 particularly about the criterion of the control of corruption, which had a noticeable drop at that year in the governance score (Index, Graph 5). At that time it was revealed that, Wolfgang Schauble, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), under which Angela Merkel ran for the Position of the chancellor, was bribed. In fact, he admitted that he committed that crime where more than 100,000 Duetch Mark were given as a donation from the lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber (Rohwedder, 2002).. Connecting the dots with the rule of law in 2006, Germany learnt form the history that there are certain principles that should be followed in order to be a major. When Germany utilized the absolute use of power it was not fruitful, so another recipe would make a difference. In other words, Germany emphasized on incorporating the civil society and respecting the rule of law in every and each difficulty in order to have a legitimate rule aiming for successful governance. On one hand, the world bank date concerning the Regulatory Quality for Germany shows that it has been always very high, and even when it a goes through a drop, like in 1998 or 2008, it survives it with a steady improvement (Index, Graph 9).