Thank the sociologist! | FAZ | EUROtoday

Politician books are a style that normally leaves its authors little freedom. In the case of the retrospective, former politicians clarify what they did effectively (within the case of fine political books, additionally what wasn’t so good). Active politicians, then again, normally describe what good issues they’ll do if the voters allow them to.

The e-book that the previous Green Party chief Ricarda Lang revealed with the sociologist Steffen Mau shouldn’t be a e-book that suffers from too little freedom. On the one hand, Lang doesn’t communicate as a former occasion chief, however no less than slightly as a future prime Green politician. On the opposite hand, the politician, accompanied by the scientist Mau, truly largely succeeds in not even suggesting fast options. And so that you learn a political e-book that’s pleasantly essentially concerning the unpleasantly difficult political drawback.

Both communicate from a left-wing perspective, i.e. from a fundamental political angle that considers questions of justice to even be questions of distribution. Mau, for instance, asks: “How well does democratization actually work under conditions of economic precarity or crisis?” He then instantly solutions: “The findings are actually always the same: not particularly good.” The sociologist skilled the GDR and does lots of analysis on attitudes within the East – so he can add views to the political debate with Lang {that a} younger girl from Swabia would possibly in any other case miss.

For instance, it’s instructive, as Mau describes, that after the top of the GDR the final hope was that we’d lastly dwell in a performance-based system. Instead of political loyalties, it appeared as for those who might grow to be something, “if you just tried hard and qualified. But when people walked through the door to the market economy, they realized: My goodness, chance rules here, depending on how old I am, what job I have or whether I am mobile, i.e. can go to Austria or Baden-Württemberg. My life chances depend on that.”

Couldn’t such frustration even be handled politically from the left? Ricarda Lang, amongst others, provides her personal Greens a deadly report on this challenge: It is astonishing that “almost no party in Germany – not even mine – is prioritizing the issue of educational advancement, even though it was and is actually one of the defining themes of German history.” Especially since their political opponents took benefit of the frustration, as Lang observes in political e-book polemical phrases: “When Jens Spahn says that today only people who receive citizens’ benefit can afford an apartment in the city center, then that is of course nonsense and completely absurd. He takes a real problem – people can no longer find an apartment in the city center, at least not one that they can pay for – and looks for a scapegoat for it. He first steps down properly.”

Interestingly, in his dialog with Mau, Lang doesn’t advocate getting upset concerning the CDU politician Spahn. “Why do these statements resonate with many people? Because they really can’t find an affordable apartment. The housing market is spoiled, there are also people who receive citizens’ benefit, there will be something to it . . . It doesn’t help to always react with indignation and pointing fingers, as I often experience with political colleagues.” Instead, you will need to restore belief “that things can get better for us collectively, that there will be a form of social security and actually fair distribution, especially for the middle class. Because the more threatened they feel, the more they will try to protect themselves from the bottom.”

Basic political questions are mentioned on 400 pages, attitudes are spelled out somewhat than fast options propagated. The sociologist, himself an interpreter of the current in demand in politics, can repeatedly provide alternatives for a change of perspective with skeptical objections and problem the politician. This is sweet for eager about political packages and can also be informative for anybody who would weigh elementary political questions in a different way than Lang and Mau.

Both agree that events mustn’t solely mirror opinions, but additionally try to kind such positions among the many inhabitants within the first place. To obtain this, politicians mustn’t solely communicate to their occasion colleagues in program commissions, however, the e-book suggests, additionally to folks from exterior. Not solely, but additionally with pleasure, with sociologists.

Ricarda Lang, Steffen Mau: The huge upheaval. A dialog about crises, conflicts and compromises. Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 2025. 400 pages, €24.99