Karsten Grabow, "The Re-emergence of the Cadre Party? Organizational Patterns of Christian and Social Democrats in Unified Germany," Party Politics, 7 (January 2001), 23-43.

First Paragraph:
On the eve of German unification, party representatives of the western Christian and Social Democrats ceremoniously merged their organizations with their sister organizations in the East. In accordance with transformation research, this paper deals with the effects of formal institutional, organizational linkage and massive financial transfers on the organizational development of the two major political parties in Eastern Germany. More precisely, I assess whether the party organizations of the Christian and Social Democrats in the New German Under have developed structural patterns similar to those of their sister organizations in West Germany in the first decade of democratic transition, or whether beneath the surface of the formal transfers the eastern parties offer other organizational practices and structures.

Figures and Tables:
Table 1: Membership development in the SPD and CDU since 1991 p. 26
Figure 1: Membership density of SPD and CDU p. 26
Table 2: The organizational strength of local party branches p. 27
Table 3: Evaluation of organizational strategies among the party organizers p. 29
Table 4: Expenditures of the parties for... p. 30
Table 5: The realization of ideal type-characteristics by the parties p. 31
Figure 2: The distribution of intra-party power p. 34
Figure 3: Major electoral resources of the parties p. 35
Figure 4: Typological classification of the party organizations in Germany p. 37

Last Paragraph:
The East German divisions of the SPD and CDU can anticipate this highly probable development. Indeed, on average, they attain similar electoral successes as their sister organizations (single associations like the CDU in Saxony and Thuringia or the SPD in Brandenburg up to the 1999 elections even reached absolute majorities) without equally strong organized party structures and therefore with much lower organizational costs. Moreover, as the scores in Table 5 indicate, they offer distinct features of an electoral professionalization, including an apparent candidate orientation. In so far as both eastern party divisions may serve as models to which the western parties will probably approach, they also suffered severe membership losses during the last decade (see Table 1). Simultaneously, both western parties steadily increased their professional campaign potential. This leads to the assumption that in future party organizations may lose organizational strength, especially members, but compensate for these losses with a turn to a more intense electoral professionalization along with advanced candidate-centred campaigns. However, this is a question that can be answered only by further empirical investigations of the organizational development of German political parties.