Why did the East Germans rebel?

• Author: Lohmann, Susanne

In June 1953, 500,000 citizens of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) participated in a mass revolt against the regime. Their protest was violently suppressed. Between 1953 and 1989, mass demonstrations were unheard of in the GDR. Then, in the fall of 1989, the citizens of Leipzig took to the streets. They demonstrated on thirteen consecutive Mondays, between September 25 and December 18. Turnout peaked at more than 300,000 on November 6. The Berlin Wall fell a few days later. On October 3, 1990, just one year after the first "Monday demonstration," the GDR ceased to exist when the five East German states acceded to the (West German) Federal Republic of Germany.

The East German protest raises one of the most difficult questions of social science: what drives people to participate in collective action? Karl-Dieter Opp, the premier German sociologist, considers this question together with Peter Voss, an East German pollster and public opinion specialist, and Christiane Gern, a West German researcher, in Origins of a Spontaneous Revolution: East Germany, 1989 (1995). Most accounts of the 1989 revolution in the GDR consist of thick description that can at best be classified as insightful journalism. The book by Opp, Voss, and Gern stands out because the authors take the "science" in social science seriously. Their account is based on a theory of rational action and a systematic analysis of survey data. Their exemplary work on the East German revolution belongs on the bookshelf of every serious scholar of collective action and of modern Germany. Having made a strong positive statement, I now turn to some problems I have with the theory, the data, and the literature review provided by the book.

Perception Biases and Collective Action

The theory of rational action in this book is largely based on Opp's earlier work (e.g., Opp 1989). The basic unit of analysis is the individual, who takes action if the benefits of participating in collective action exceed the costs. To explain how people overcome the free-rider problem of collective action, Opp, Voss, and Gern invoke the existence of a perception bias:

the single individual within a large group has no influence on the

provision of the public good at which the group aims. This may be

true, but a single person's decision to take part in a demonstration

does not depend on whether this person will really be influential,

but rather on whether she or he. perceives that her or his

participation makes a difference. Empirical research has shown that there

are many people who believe that their individual political action,

whether voting or protesting, is influential. (Opp, Voss, and Gern

1995, 36)

The authors marshal survey data to demonstrate the empirical descriptiveness of the assumption that people believe their actions can affect the outcome of a collective enterprise. In November and December 1990, a representative sample of 1,300 citizens of Leipzig were surveyed about the events that occurred in the fall of 1989. The authors also interviewed 209 members of opposition groups and another 19 citizens of Leipzig. A large percentage of the survey respondents did indeed express the belief that their actions were politically influential.

Unfortunately, these data do not allow the authors to discriminate effectively between their perception-bias hypothesis and the null hypothesis that people's assessments are accurate.

Prisoner's Dilemma versus Voluntary and Costly Contributions to a Public Good

Mancur Olson (1965) argues that costly participation in a collective enterprise is subject to a free-rider problem. Misinterpreting Olson's contribution, many social scientists conceive of collective action as a prisoner's dilemma problem, which yields a point prediction of zero participation (at...