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a Institute for Sociology, Free University of Berlin, Germany
Correspondence: Martin Kohli, Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Soziologie, Babelsberger Str. 14-16, D-10715 Berlin, Germany. E-mail: kohli{at}zedat.fu-berlin.de.
The point of departure of this essay is the by now well-established fact (Riley, Kahn, and Foner 1994
) that contemporary Western societies are marked by a massive structural lag: Their degree of age integration is low and seems to be increasingly at odds with their social and demographic resources. Age criteria are still highly inflexible, and structural age barriers remain important. Structures such as those of education, work, or leisure thus tend to be age homogeneous, that is, they do not offer individuals the opportunity to interact with others who differ in age.
This state of affairs in Western societies is a result of modernization; it has been produced and deepened over the past two centuries by a process that I have termed the "institutionalization of the life course" (Kohli 1986), and which reached its culmination in the 1960s. While there are now some indications that this process has come to a halt and has even started to partly reverse itself, the general pattern has not changed: In their basic contexts of living outside their families, individuals are still predominantly confronted with their own age peers. If this is so, how then do these societies assure their age integration? How do they achieve the level of cross-age interaction that is necessary for their survival?
Where cross-age interaction in the structures of everyday life is deficient, it needs to be institutionalized in other domains. In this essay, I discuss cross-age interaction in the domain of interest mediation. This concerns, on the one hand, the political system in its more narrow sense, where the interests of individual citizens are mediated through parties and social movements, and, on the other hand, the economic system where the workers have traditionally organized their interests through unions.
For cross-age interaction in the domain of interest mediation, there are two basic alternatives. The large organizations of interest mediation such as parties or unions can either be age homogeneous, that is, restricted to specific age groups such as those of "working age," or age encompassing. In the first case, interest mediation among age groups is externalized to the political "market"—to the conflict between organizations. The political market (e.g., competition in elections and in parliament) is then structured along age lines (such as between wage earners and clients of the welfare state, or between workers and pensioners). In the second case, age-encompassing organizations, interest mediation among age groups is internalized, and the political market is likely to be structured along political camps such as traditional classes (or religions, or ethnic/linguistic cleavages).
As to political parties, it seems obvious that they are usually age encompassing. In Germany, this is indeed (more or less) true for their membership. But it is less clear for political activity and leadership (Kohli, Neckel, and Wolf 1999).
The nonusual cases are the "gray" parties, which orient themselves exclusively to the interests of the elderly population (e.g., toward improving public pensions). There are two countries—The Netherlands and the Czech Republic—where "gray" parties have at times succeeded in capturing some seats in the national parliament. In Germany, the Grays have during a few years formed an election alliance with the Greens, which has allowed them to send their leader into the Federal parliament even though their share of votes remained much below the required quorum of 5%. But, similar to other one-issue parties, gray parties have been vulnerable to the political ups and downs of their issue—or to the appropriation of their issue by the larger parties—and therefore have not been able to attract a stable proportion of voters. In Germany, as in other countries, they have for the time being slipped back into insignificance.
With the larger parties, membership is indeed spread out over the whole adult life span. But the distribution is far from even: The parties are much stronger among the elderly population than the young. Thus, among the Social Democrats (SPD), 30% of the members (in 1995) were above age 60, and only 6% below 30. For the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), the figures were 33% and 5%, respectively. The first rank is taken by the East German ex-Communists (PDS), where the share of the elderly members is 40%. And even the Greens—who "in the interest of data protection" refuse to publish data on the social composition of their members—seem to face a situation where their core cohorts are advancing along the age spectrum.
The parties are aging rapidly, and of course they see this as a very mixed blessing. They have been successful in retaining their elderly members in the organization, and the old have remained an important organizational resource for them. But they have had much less success in integrating the young people. This creates a difficult organizational dilemma. On the one hand, the elderly members are increasingly asking for more than passive membership—they want to participate actively and to be heard. They are still less influenced by individualization, and thus less prone to political volatility, but even they are no longer the rock-sure lifelong members. In the back lurks the threat to the parties of losing the elderly members and voters to those who offer them more—for example, the Grays. On the other hand, this is likely to turn off the young people even more. The parties try to cope with this dilemma by creating special suborganizations for their elderly members that engage them as activists and help to mobilize the elderly voters—who with their growing population share and higher turnout increasingly determine the election outcomes—while at the same time limiting their say in general party matters.
Political activity and leadership are still heavily concentrated in the middle years of the life course. An especially drastic indicator is the age structure of the Federal parliament. Both the younger and the elderly population are underrepresented. Until the end of the 1960s, the share of young members (up to age 35) had remained below 5%. In the election of 1972, it doubled to 9.1%—a consequence of the rebellion of the "68" generation. In 1990, there was again an increase—this time as a consequence of German unification, which brought a sizable group of young members from the East into parliament. Both "rejuvenations," however, were short-lived. The share of elderly members (aged 65 and older) declined from 9.6% (elections of 1961) to 1.4 in 1976, and then increased again somewhat; but with 3.3% in 1994, it has remained considerably below the level of 1961, and now represents only about one fifth of the population share over age 65.
We thus find a similarly paradoxical evolution as in employment: Political leadership is also marked by a trend toward early retirement. It seems to be an unwritten law that members of parliament who have reached retirement age no longer run for reelection. Possible reasons are external pressure as well as individual preference. Perhaps the party leadership exerts pressure to create vacancies for younger people. But equally possibly, the stresses of life in politics are high enough and the pensions generous enough to make members quit by their own choice.
As to trade unions, it seems obvious that they are not age encompassing—they are focused on the labor force. This is indeed true for their main clientele. But it is less clear with regard to overall membership (Kohli, Kunemund, and Wolf 1997).
In the German case, quite unintentionally, the unions have become one of the largest old-age organizations. At the end of 1994, the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) had 1.7 million retired members, corresponding to roughly 10% of the population above 60 and 13% of the pensioners. This was less than for the population of active working age (18–60), where membership in the DGB corresponded to roughly 17% (or 30% of the employed labor force). But given the usual perception of unions as organizations of active workers, the degree of "unionization" of retirees, and, conversely, of the "graying" of the unions, comes as a surprise.
The dilemma here is evident, even more so than with political parties. On the one hand, unions have an interest in keeping their retirees as members because their strength in the collective bargaining process depends on the number of their members—whether active or not. Even in the case of industrial conflict, elderly people may be of help. In strike campaigns, for example, retirees are in a better position than workers because they virtually have nothing to lose—they cannot be fired. Moreover, the union retirees are multiplicators of union politics and, as such, a potential of great importance in recruitment. They are useful not only in terms of a head count, or as volunteers and supporters in the bargaining process, but may help in gaining new members. A unionist tradition in families or communities is hardly imaginable where elderly retirees are crowded out of the organization. In other words, if the unions stopped organizing retirees, they might undermine one of their own organizational resources.
On the other hand, with a growing proportion of retirees, unions face the problem of goal conflicts. Their main field must remain that of industrial conflict and negotiation, but they experience lower revenues from membership dues that remain fixed (given that retirees usually are charged only a fraction of what applies to the active members), and rising benefits to be paid. Moreover, some of the elderly members (especially the former union activists) are increasingly self-confident and desire more active participation in union politics for their own agenda. As do the political parties, unions try to cope with this dilemma by creating special organizational forms for their older members—to satisfy them and enlist them in mobilizing more general support among elders, while at the same time limiting their influence on overall decision making. There is a range of organizational options available, all with their advantages and disadvantages, that have been variously experimented with in different European countries.
What are the consequences of these patterns of interest mediation? Political parties as well as unions try to remain age encompassing, and thereby to internalize interest mediation across all ages while at the same time keeping their focus of activity and leadership in the middle years. How they will solve this organizational dilemma will be crucial not only for their own strength but also for societal age integration more generally.
For the economic well-being of elders, the results of their being integrated into age-encompassing organizations of interest mediation seem to have been rather positive. So far, Germany (unlike, e.g., the United States) has not developed much in terms of age-based organizations and lobbies for the elderly population—not because German elders are less able to organize but because, given the age-encompassing policy framework, it has been less necessary for them. The political parties and—this being a corporatist system—the unions have been quite effective in first expanding and now maintaining a high level of public old-age social security. Based on these results, it would appear that the elderly population stands to gain from taking the age-relevant issues out of the arena of direct conflict between age-based organizations, and internalizing them into the large organizations of interest mediation themselves, thereby making them more age encompassing.
On the level of activity and participation, the results are more mixed. It may well be that age-homogeneous organizations would offer elderly people more direct opportunities for participation and self-direction, and have a greater potential for mobilization.
On the level of immediate cross-age interaction, the results are again predominantly positive. In age-encompassing organizations, elders can serve as models and living memory of past experiences (e.g., political or industrial conflicts), and they are in turn confronted with change and innovations. Age-encompassing organizations thus reinforce the daily interaction and mutual learning among generations, which is an important part of social cohesion; by this, they also contribute to reasonable ways of resolving the generational conflicts of interests and of cultural perspectives that typically occur in aging societies.
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