War die DDR totalitär?

For decades the interpretation of the governmental system of the GDR is causing controversy in the autocracy research community. The fact that the SED regime is so evidently a "dictatorship" has led to a general dissent as to whether the governmental system should be classified as authoritarianism or totalitarianism. For clarification of this conflict, the present study analyzes the governmental system of the GDR on the basis of the totalitarian models of Carl J. Friedrich, Juan J. Linz, Karl D. Bracher and Peter Graf Kielmansegg. The author does not formulate an own concept of totalitarianism, but rather applies and evaluates systematically the four models. The empirically based findings show that for the whole period of its existence, from the year 1949 to 1989, the monistic party rule of the SED should be labeled as "totalitarian". A significant process of “detotalitarization” could not be identified, which would downgrade the SED regime to a "non-totalitarian" autocratic regime.