The National Democratic Party of Germany - Analysis and prospects.

This study attempts to demonstrate a method of analysing political movements on a left-right continuum in terms of social class base and relative institutionalisation, with special reference to the centre of the spectrum, and suggests that the 'convergence' argument against the left-right model is lacking, that recent attempts to understand and complexify the model have failed, and that previous analyses of 'fascist' (i.e., in the terms of this study, highly uninstitutionalised centrist) movements fall short because they have concentrated on the study of structure rather than culture, the state rather than movement, and ideology rather than relative institutionalisation. The study compares the NPD with early Nazism, Poujadism, Welsh and Scottish Nationalism, Powellism, Gaullism and the Rassemblement Jurassien in terms of relative institutionalisation and social class appeal and support. It is considered to what extent the culture of German society, analysed in terms of verspatete Nation, the Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft dichotomy, 'nostalgia for synthesis' and a bipolar/multipolar, centripetal/centrifugal model, and the structures of the Federal German state, in particular in respect of organization of the Bundesrat, the method of electoral financing, the budgetary system and the recent enactment of emergency powers' legislation, influence the specific form of, and the prospects for, the NPD. These findings are then related to the potential conflict and consensus situations in modern, complex, industrialised societies, indicating the partly integrative nature of conflict and the non-necessity of consensus for the ordinary on-going process of the state, leading to some preliminary theses for a theory of political stability. Finally, the leanings towards empirical methodology employed in this study are defended against some of the recent attacks on behaviouralism specifically, and the sociological approach in general, in British academic journals.