Dr. Torben Lütjen (01.07.2006-30.06.2008)
Friendship in the shadow of power. The political friends of German chancellors from Adenauer to Merkel
Born: 10.12.1974 in Bremen
Contact: torben.luetjen@uni-duesseldorf.de
Current Position
Research Fellow (Schumpeter Fellow) at the University of Dusseldorf, Institut für Deutsches und Internationales Parteienrecht und Parteienforschung
Former Research Project
Friendship in the shadow of power. The political friends of German chancellors from Adenauer to Merkel
The personal relations between politicians have very rarely been the
subject of political science. This research project about the political
friends of German chancellors is the first step which will help to close
this gap. The research will focus on advisors and consultants of the
German chancellors who had exclusive and amicable relationships with
them. This group of people is particularly suitable for a first
rapprochement to the subject of political friendship,
because we are dealing with informal consulting-circles who have to act
in a “secret” area where trust, discretion, and loyalty are
particularly important attributes.
The purpose of this project, however, is not a normative appraisal and classification of political friendship but rather the contribution to an extended analysis of power relations. The assumption is that political friendship must be understood as a form of social capital that conducts different functions. Political friendship
can for example serve as a “shelter” or refuge from an office that is
permanently watched by media and the public, and which makes high
demands on the capacity of political actors. Furthermore, it is an
interesting question if friendship can make political consultants more able to contradict their chancellors or if friendship
can make chancellors more sensitive to realizing their own mistakes and
to initiating the necessary processes of self-reflection.
Finally, the research-project will analyze how the public image of friendship has changed over the course of time. In which periods and for what reasons was political friendship considered to be illegitimate or even illegal and when was this not the case?
But
besides critics in non-democratic and in transparent decision-making
processes, we can also assume that the leadership-qualities of the
chiefs of the executive have also been classified by different
standards. In what context was political friendship between an advisor and his chancellor considered as efficient
consulting, and in what context did it rather made an impression of
manipulability and lacking leadership?