“What kind of society do we want to live in?” – This is the key topic of the 2024 Deutschland-Monitor. What values are shared in our society? Are the constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights, the ideas about social coexistence and the design of democracy supported by a broad consensus? Can conflicting assessments be explained solely by the individual characteristics of the respondents or can they also be attributed to different regional living environments (“contexts”)? These and other questions link this year's main topic with the long-term basic canon of questions of the Deutschland-Monitor.
The answers of the respondents show:
There is a broad common basis of values in Germany. The vast majority of the population in both East and West Germany want to live in a society in which fundamental liberal-democratic rights and values are guaranteed. There is less agreement, however, on whether individual freedoms, such as freedom of the press and freedom of expression, are actually being implemented. Those who feel that their freedoms are not being respected are often also less satisfied with the state of democracy and have less trust in political institutions.
There is also broad consensus about democracy as a form of government. 98 percent are in favor of it. Likewise, the Basic Law as a constitutional order is supported by a very large majority (80 percent). However, there is greater disagreement regarding the current functioning of democracy: while 64 percent of West Germans are satisfied, only 48 percent of East Germans are satisfied with the way democracy is currently working.
Critical attitudes towards politics are more widespread in structurally weak regions than in structurally stronger regions of the republic. “Where people feel they are not getting a fair share or are afraid of losing their status, support for the political system and its actors also fades. This is expressed, for example, in the form of low satisfaction with democracy, weak trust in institutions and populist attitudes,” says Jörg Hebenstreit, a political scientist at the University of Jena.
In both parts of Germany, there are high expectations of the welfare state. Around three quarters of all respondents expressed the expectation that the state would provide for them in the event of significant life risks. Attitudes in the west have become so aligned with those in the east that the former east-west difference has now been eliminated.
In Germany as a whole, there is currently a lack of a sense of unity: only around a third of respondents trust other people. Only a quarter of respondents believe that people support each other. Not even one in eight people rate social cohesion positively. The poor assessment of society as a whole stands in stark contrast to the assessment of social cohesion in the place of residence, which is rated much more positively. According to political scientist Everhard Holtmann from the Center for Social Research in Halle, this positive experience of the local living environment offers an important resource for the entire community.
When it comes to controversial issues – such as climate protection and migration – negative attitudes are more common in East Germany than in West Germany. However, East-West differences are mainly found among older people who were born and socialized in the former GDR or old Federal Republic. By contrast, younger people who grew up in reunified Germany largely share the same views on society in both East and West. Reinhard Pollak, a sociologist at the GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Mannheim, believes that this, as well as the finding that attitudes in structurally strong districts in the east and structurally weak districts in the west are very similar, supports the thesis of the Deutschland-Monitor that the assumption of a general east-west difference no longer corresponds to reality.