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I don't know about Japan, but at least in Germany there were several factors that contributed to an "orderly" transition into a western-style parliamentary democracy: - as others already have noted, Germany had a certain democratic tradition already, most remarkably the 1848 revolution and the Weimar Republic (1919-1933, though it abolished itself de facto in 1930). Many of the leading politicians had been involved in politics for the Social Democrats (the German SPD is actually the oldest social democrat party in the world, tracing itself back to the General German Workers' Association founded in 1863 and therefore even older than the state of Germany itself), the Zentrum/BVP (two conservative-Catholic parties which stood for the idea of a strong parliament against the Protestant and authoritarian Hohenzollern monarchy, the former being started in 1870 and the latter as an offshoot of the Zentrum in 1918) or the DVP/DDP (two liberal parties that were strongest in southwestern Germany) for decades, in many cases even going back to Imperial Germany. The first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, had been active for the Zentrum since 1906, for example. - there was a strong drive by most Germans to distance themselves from the Third Reich (hmmm I wonder why?). The massive devastation that the war had brought upon Germany itself also played a large role in establishing the feeling of a new beginning, what with most of its larger cities being reduced to rubble, millions being dead and millions more having been forced to abandon their homes in the former East of Germany. The end of WWII is commonly known as "the hour zero" in Germany because of that. Supposedly the carnival parties of the years 1946-49 were legendary as well. Many people supported the notion of "lokking forward, not looking back" - the main goal was to make Germany livable again. Pondering the horrors of WWII and the holocaust was neither needed nor welcome, which also meant that there was only little anger at the own defeat. - Contributing to the idea of a clean start was the de-nazification program set up by the Allies. While in reality former Nazi officials were judged exceedingly benign in most cases, it also played a part in making this new beginning possible as the Germans could feel that the Third Reich truly was a closed chapter. The benign policy of the Allies also meant that lots and lots of people with a Nazi past were allowed to work for the state authorities again. While this was obviously prblematic, it also meant that the German authorities could rely on their experience and pretty much perform a running start, so to speak. Owing to the aforementioned feeiling of "this is all behind us!", those former Nazis also had (in most cases) zero interest in reviving their old political beliefs, dedicating themselves to the new Germany instead. As far as I know, this didn't happen in Iraq: instead, former Baath officials were fired en masse, leaving a governmental structure whose officials had no idea what they were doing and had to learn everything on the go while simultaneously dumping hundreds of thousands of experiencd and well-connected people on the street, leaving them easy prey for radical Islamists and the like. - Lastly (and most importantly imo) it came down to commitment. While the individual states for the most part had been reinstated by 1946, the overarching structure of a German federal government only was allowed to come back in 1949. Western Germany was occupied territory until 1955 and didn't become fully sovereign until 1990 (!), with the Allied High Commission having extensive rights and control in Germany for at least the first ten years after the war. The Allies followed a determined policy of demilitarisation, de-industrialisation, denazification, democratisation and decentralisation (though with varying success - I also spoke about denazification, but the deindustrialisation wasn't really followed through with as well). Through the Marshal plan, Germany was given lots of aid to rebuild itself. Why this commitment? Easy: through its own defeat against the Soviets, Western Germany had become the last outpost of the West against the "communist hordes", which even had claimed a substantial part of Germany. Rebuilding Germany as quickly as possible was therefore in the Western Allies' best interests, while on the Germans' side it was clear that you either sided with the USA and NATO or you would fall prey to the Eastern bloc with nothing inbetween. Whether this was really the case is a matter of debate, of course, but this was the prevalent feeling of the time and also was a main reason for Germany not trying to avenge itself or whatever. e: Oh, and the fact that Germany experienced an enormous upswing in the economy was a very important factor in all that too, of course.
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Apr 21, 2015 16:56
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Shbobdb posted:The God-King Konrad Adenauer came down from the heavens and created democracy from the rubble of Allied bombings. Also the economic miracle. Yes, because this is exactly what I said?  It wasn't Adenauer, it was a combination of the Allies' efforts, the desire of the Germans to cooperate and the economic miracle, but I thought I already had lined that out in my post. Sorry if I wasn't being clear.
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Apr 21, 2015 19:04
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Orange Sunshine posted:There's an important difference between Islam and Christianity in this regard, though. The bible was written by dozens of people over a thousand years, and then the 2nd half of it says you don't have to follow the first half of it. It's as far from a unified document as it could be, and as a result, no one knows how to interpret the thing. This allows Christianity to change with the times. The Koran, on the other hand, is the words of one man, and it contains explicit instructions on how to live every aspect of one's life and how everything should be done. The end result is that Muslims are required for all time to live like 7th century arabs. Wow some hard-hitting theological truths itt 
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Apr 22, 2015 06:22
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