From Treason to ‘Germanophobia’ – Political Criminality as Concept Creep

Abstract

This paper investigates a shift in the concept of “political crime” in reunified Germany. It analyzes a gradual expansion of the concept, starting with its narrow, state-centered definition in the early 1990s. This definition then was gradually broadened to the point where it now contains a range of bias-motivated crimes. In order to explain these changes, the paper applies the psychology-based model of concept creep to the field of political crime. From this theoretical perspective, the conceptual expansion can take on “horizontal” and “vertical” forms: It expands outward, thereby producing new forms of political crime; and it expands downward as it subjectifies the definition criteria and thereby includes more cases. The cause of this expansion is a discursive shift. The state responds to political pressure in the context of a public conflict over the definition and recognition of political crime. The consequences of this response are ambivalent, as the progressive notion of expanding the moral circle threatens to give way to the relativization of oppression by equating different victim groups.