Abstract
Governing the First World War in Germany and the Netherlands. Bureaucratism, Parliamentarism and Corruption Scandals
In both the Netherlands and Germany the First World War and the economic regulations it necessitated proved to be a breeding ground for corruption. Using the cases of Poultry and Pulses in the Netherlands and Sklarz and Erzberger in Germany as examples, we aim to shed a light both on the interactions between politics and economy that lay at the base of these corruption scandals and the ideologies – namely parliamentarism and bureaucratism – that influenced them. While in both countries criticism was mainly directed against the political sphere and thus was used to delegitimize parliamentary politics, it had drastically different effects: In the Netherlands it caused the transfer of issues of «good governance» from parliament to expert groups while in Germany it served to further radicalise the political debate itself.
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