Exercise 2: The Structural Difference Between the West and East German Constitutions on Party Power — Possible Solution
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This exercise is asking for the specific structural contrast, not just a
general statement that one system was democratic and the other wasn't.

WHAT THE WEST GERMAN CONSTITUTION ACTUALLY DOES (CHAPTER 2)
Article 21(2) of the Basic Law gives the Federal Constitutional Court the
power to ban a political party if it threatens the free democratic order.
This is a defensive, negative power - the constitution doesn't name any
specific party as protected or dominant. Instead it creates a mechanism
that can be turned against ANY party, including a currently popular or
governing one, if that party's own aims threaten democracy itself. The
power exists to prevent any single party from ever becoming permanently,
unchallengeably dominant.

WHAT THE EAST GERMAN CONSTITUTION ACTUALLY DOES
East Germany's real 1968 constitution does the structural opposite. Rather
than creating a mechanism that could be used against any threatening party,
it explicitly names and constitutionally guarantees the SED's own
permanent supremacy - defining the state itself as a "socialist state" led
by "the working class and its Marxist-Leninist party." This isn't a
defensive power available to be used if needed; it is a standing,
built-in guarantee that one specific party will always hold power, written
directly into the country's founding legal document.

WHY THIS IS A GENUINE STRUCTURAL OPPOSITE, NOT JUST A DIFFERENT DEGREE
The West German mechanism is conditional and party-neutral - it only
activates if a party actually threatens democracy, and it could
theoretically be aimed at any party, including the SED had it existed
inside the same system. The East German mechanism is unconditional and
party-specific - it doesn't depend on the SED doing anything in particular,
and it doesn't apply to any other party at all. One system uses its
highest law to prevent concentrated, unchallengeable party power; the other
uses its highest law to permanently guarantee it.

ANSWER: The two constitutions took genuinely opposite structural approaches
to party power. West Germany's Article 21(2) creates a conditional,
party-neutral defensive mechanism that lets the Constitutional Court ban
ANY party that threatens democracy, preventing permanent one-party
dominance. East Germany's 1968 constitution does the reverse: it
unconditionally and explicitly guarantees one specific party, the SED, a
permanent leading role, written directly into the state's own definition of
itself - using the constitution to entrench exactly the kind of
unchallengeable single-party power the West German system was designed to
prevent.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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It identifies the precise structural contrast (a conditional, party-neutral
ban mechanism versus an unconditional, party-specific guarantee) rather than
simply labeling one system democratic and the other authoritarian, showing
the two constitutions are true structural opposites rather than just
different in degree.