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- Title
Sovereignty Trade-Offs between Politics and the Economy: The Deconcentration of IG Farben after 1945.
- Authors
Müller, Philipp
- Abstract
The postwar deconcentration of IG Farben AG shows that the Allied military governments and their German counterparts were anything but united on the extent and form of sovereignty the Federal Republic of Germany should receive. The American plan to divide the corporate enterprise into a large number of individual companies aimed to establish a democratic state independent from the influence of domestic business. By contrast, West German government officials and the business community were convinced that the future sovereignty of the Federal Republic depended on the global competitiveness of large industrial conglomerates. To thwart the American deconcentration plans, they traded off one dimension of sovereignty against the other. Leading members of the West German government accepted delegating the negotiations over the future of IG Farben to business representatives, thereby sharing domestic sovereignty because the delegation promised to maintain a powerful German chemical industry that could support the trade balance of the future West German state. This development contributed to the emergence of a Federal Republic characterized by the close involvement of economic actors in political decision-making. It contained important elements of a post-democratic sovereignty, which is commonly used to describe the development of the late twentieth century.
- Subjects
INTERESSENGEMEINSCHAFT Farbenindustrie AG; LIBERALISM; DEMOCRACY; CAPITALISM; GERMAN history
- Publication
Central European History (Cambridge University Press / UK), 2022, Vol 55, Issue 1, p53
- ISSN
0008-9389
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S000893892100176X