Democracy Comes to Leipzig,GDR: Political Communication in the First Free Local Election After the Fall of the Communist Regime

Abstract

The article focuses on the first free local elections in the German Democratic Republic in May 1990. At that time the GDR was undergoing the transition from a totalitarian state to a democracy. In this situation of upheaval the reciprocal relationships of the political actors — voters, parties, media — as well as the respective self-assessment of each, were investigated. To accomplish this, a survey of voters and party representatives was carried out together with a content analysis of local newspapers. The study is limited to the city of Leipzig where, in October 1989, the peaceful revolution began. A comparison of the issue agendas of the three political subsystems revealed significant differences in the issue priorities. Above all, the emphases in the newspaper election coverage differed greatly both from those of voters and the parties. Within the respective voters' and parties' subsystems, by contrast, a remarkable homogeneity was demonstrated which was not confined by ideological boundaries.

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