This is a women's research planning grant to prepare a study of perceptions of success and failure in the fall of the German Democratic Republic, that will advance the scientific understanding of processes of democratization. It will support travel by the investigator to the former German Democratic Republic and consultation with German social movement scholars and activists in Berlin, Leipzig, and Dresden, three cities central to the civic movement mobilization. Consultations will concern appropriate questions and format for an interview schedule and for a sampling strategy that will address the complexities of the changing composition of the opposition groups in the three cities over the course of 1989-1990, social movement careers of activists selected from these groups before and since that period, and differences in the composition, goals and success perceptions of activists in the three cities. %%% This grant will provide the information necessary for writing an NSF grant proposal to support interviewing in each of the three cities on differences in the opposition movement and the careers of activists. This work is supported under the Research Planning Grant program for women scientists and engineers, and thus among its chief aims are to assist a promising woman social scientist to prepare for a major research project, and to expand the scientific personnel of the United States. The results of this study will be valuable for policy-makers attempting to understand the social process of democratization in formerly totalitarian societies.
