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Abstract
With the collapse of the socialist regime in East Germany in late 1989 and the rising
political call for unification in early 1990, a deep change of the institutional structure
became necessary. The (agricultural) administration had to be totally restructured. This
referred not only to substance, functions and tasks which had to be adjusted – similar to
all other transition economies - to the market-economic and pluralistic democratic
system, but also the whole administrative set-up had to be re-established in line with the
West German system. Hence, a new administrative system had to be built up from scratch
in the East, while the socialist one had to be dismantled in a short period. Overall, this
institutional change seems to have been accomplished successfully as billions of Deutsch
Mark could be processed by the agricultural administration in 1990 in order to avoid an
imminent collapse of the agricultural sector. This administrative transformation was
characterised by few rules, but a “pioneer spirit” among the staff involved which allowed
a large degree of liberty in decision-making. The staff had to improvise and act
pragmatically in order to get the tasks accomplished