AGI

Society, Culture & Politics

The AGI Society, Culture & Politics Program focuses on crucial topics within the German-American dialogue, including: demographic change, migration/integration, and aging societies; electoral politics at the national, state, and European levels, and comparative analysis of Germany and the United States; diversity within Germany, Europe, and the United States; the politics of collective memory and identity, Holocaust remembrance and reconciliation, and shifting conceptions of national identity that shape perspectives and policy responses.
Reset

No Vodka for Lunch

Germany’s Feminist Foreign Policy as Part of the Zeitenwende Reports about German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock’s first visit to Moscow on January 18, 2022, recorded that she told Russian foreign …

The Not-so-Sudden Death of Weimar Democracy

January 30, 1933, the day that Reich President Paul von Hindenburg appointed the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany—and a day whose 90th anniversary we marked last month—was …

The Evolution of German Citizenship Law

Over the past three decades, German citizenship law has evolved from a largely jus sanguinis (“right of blood”) system with a high bar for naturalization to something closer to jus …

Advocating for the Local Level

Local Government Associations in Germany and the United States In recent years, politics in Germany and the United States were affected by enormous global challenges and crises, such as the …

Berlin Votes… Again

Observers of German politics often lament the exaggerated attention devoted to state (Land) elections—especially those that do not coincide with a national election. Such regional polls are interpreted as a …

AGI Profiles: Boris Pistorius

Federal Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius currently serves as the German Federal Minister of Defense. Appointed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz on January 17, 2023, Pistorius succeeded Christine Lambrecht following her …

Orbán’s Enablers

German Conservatives and the EU Council’s Unanimity On December 12, 2022, as the first news of Eva Kaili’s arrest and “Qatargate,” the European Parliament’s first major corruption scandal, broke, Hungarian …

Partisan Divides and Popular Fronts

We are pleased to inaugurate the AGI 40th Anniversary series with the following article, which coincides with the 90th anniversary of the Nazi seizure of power (Machtergreifung) when Hitler was appointed chancellor …

The AGI at Forty Series

How the Society, Culture, and Politics Program Has Evolved The American-German Institute at Johns Hopkins University is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Founded during the last stage of the Cold …

Berlin’s Extraordinary Election

Flaws, Failures, and Their Consequences Peter Müller, a constitutional judge, described the elections that took place on September 26, 2021, in the city-state of Berlin as follows: “One could have …

Authoritarian Rebels

The Reichsbürger Movement, the Far-Right, and the Growing Assault on German Democracy On December 7, 2022, German authorities arrested twenty-five members of the so-called “Patriotic Union,” a network that is …

Episode 74: Antidemocratic Insurrections and Populist Uprising—Germany, Brazil, and the United States

In December 2022, German authorities arrested dozens of people tied to an alleged right-wing extremist plot to overthrow the German government. Among the accused are a member of a former …