Subject of this volume are structures, figures, patterns of action and thought, which were of essential importance for the stability and legitimacy in the socialist "multiparty system" of the GDR. The SED staged the construct of alleged party pluralism in the GDR in order to cloak its hegemony to the outside and to integrate socio-political forces inwardly, which were hardly accessible to them. But this was not the only importance of the "socialist alliance policy". The autors approach the topic with various research approaches and objects. One focus is on the study of the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany (LDPD), for which hardly any well-founded studies are available so far.
