Paper Example on Germany vs. Poland Comparison

Introduction

Germany is geography located in Central Europe, bordering the North Sea and Baltic sea in between Poland and Netherlands to the south of Denmark. With an area of 357,022 sq km out of which 348,672 sq km being land, and 8,350 sq km is water, it is slightly larger than Poland. Poland is 312, 685 sq km, with 304,255 sq km being land and 8,430 sq km being water, which somewhat more than Germany's water possession. Poland, which is located, east of Germany in central Europe, has a coastline of 440 kilometers compared to Germany, which has a coastline of 2,389 kilometers. Despite some of the similarities shared by the two countries, there are a lot of social, political, and economic differences between the two nations. Sharing of common natural hazards and some climatic conditions are among the few similarities between Germany and Poland.

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Political differences

Germany is highly populated with a population twice that of Poland. The main reason for Poland's reduced population is due to the highest number of deaths reported in Poland during World War 1. More than 2 million poles fought in World War 1, and more than half a million deaths were reported after the war. Germany is the largest European economy and is the most populated country after Russia (Grosfeld & Zhuravskaya, 2015). Even though power struggles led to Germany being part of two devastating world wars, it is a significant member of various political and economic organizations in Europe.

On the other hand, Poland came into existence as a state in the early 10th century. By the 16th century, a wide area was under the Polish-Lithuanian reign in central and a significant part of Eastern Europe. However, between 1772 and 1795, internal factors weakened Poland and exposed it to its external enemies. Through a series of agreements, Poland was divided and shared among the three countries. Poland regained its independence in 1918, but again it was subjected to Germany's rule. More so, during World War 2, it fought under the Soviet Union. In 1980, following the labor turmoil led to the formation of an independent trade union. The communist era was brought to a close in Poland in 1990 as a result of free elections, which gave Poland control over the presidency and the parliament.

The cold war saw Germany develop its two states in 1949. The western state was referred to as the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the eastern Germany Democratic Republic (GDR). The two states resorted to very different paths as the western FRG made ties with other security and economic organizations such as NATO and the E.U. The eastern GDR was among the pioneers in the Warsaw pact. The end of the cold war and eradication of the USSR allowed the reunification of Germany into one state again. The German empire was formed in January 18th 1871 when Germany attained its independence. Poland attained its independence in November 11th 1918.

The system of government present Germany recently is federal parliamentary republic while Poland's system of governance is parliamentary republic. Poland's political history extends from reigns of kings and the great influence of the Catholic Church. Due to increase in intelligence due to increase education among the polish population, the needs to for self-governance were increasing. Furthermore, the favorable climatic conditions created hopes of sustainability. Nationalism was rampant during this period which led to rapid development of the most appealing political doctrine of its time. Romanticism which was European culture also exerted a lot of influence on the Polish nationals. Having similar characteristics as the political nationalism as it claimed for political conservancy and championed for sympathy for folk cultures. Such characteristics caused the most of the Polish populations to champion for Romantic movements this time.

After independence, reformed Poland faced a lot of challenges. The damage caused by the war was very extensive with Poland's economy under great influence of the Germany's company interests and most of its population which composed of nearly a third of Poland's population was war minorities. Poland adopted its formal political control in 1921 after adopting its own constitution. There was a rapid development of political parties with formation of four major political parties and other minor ones. On the other hand in Germany was under great influence of the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party. The coalition between the Democrats and liberals took over after 20 years of Christian Democratic leaders.

The Federal Republic in Germany had most of its operations unchanged in its political system operations. However, some provisions were allowed for the GDR as a former state through the unification treaty. After the unification treaty, Germany realized development of two major political party systems. The eastern part of former Germany remained with the socialist state party which flourished together with the Christian democrats and social democrats. The western part of Germany had founded the European community in 1958 which later changed and became the European Union in 1993. Germany has been part of the Eurozone, other organizations such as the U.N., NATO, G7, G20, and OECD.

Even though Poland had not reported major cases of dictatorship, Germany was serious under control of dictators for some years. The rise of dictatorship was created in 1933 after Hitler rose to power as a chancellor of Germany (Kitchen, 2019). In 1934, Hitler declared himself the sole leader of Germany and during this period he completely eliminated all kinds of opposition in the entire Germany and NAZI as a party. The fascist agenda of Hitler led to the emergence of World War 2 which claimed at 11 million lives of which included 6 million Jews. During this period, Germany faced a lot of challenges, which included a general strike, hyperinflation, French invasion, and the Nazi putsch.

Economic differences

Poland has had a good reputation for a long time as a business-friendly country that encourages investors to set up business due to their sound macroeconomic policies. It has encouraged the policy of economic liberalization since 1990 such that it was the only country to avoid recession during the 2008-2009 economic slowdowns. This can also be partly attributed to the government's loose fiscal policy that spends in the mid-term, given that it is the largest recipient of European Union (E.U.) development funds (PIATKOWSKI, 2019). On the other hand, Germany is the fifth-largest economy in the world in terms of Purchasing power parity (PPP) and the largest in Europe. It is also the leading exporter of machinery, chemicals and vehicles.

The GDP which is the purchasing power parity (PPP) for both countries have been rising over time between the years 2015 to 2017. The GDP for Germany has been $1.045, $1.076 and $1.126 in the years 2015, 2016 and 2017 respectively. Germany has had a relatively high GDP of $4.012, $4.099 and $4.199 in the years 2015, 2016 and 2017 respectively. In terms of the GDP growth rate, Poland has had a higher figure of 4.7% in 2017 while Germany has a growth rate of 2.5%in the same year (Wilts, 2017). There is an inverse relationship between the GDP and the GDP growth rate between the two countries. The GDP composition for both countries consists of agriculture, industry and services with services being contributing the biggest percentile of the total GDP for both countries.

Poland's external debt as of December 31st, 2017, was $241 billion, while that of Germany was at $5.326 billion the same year. Germany relies more on external debt to finance its economy as compared to Poland. The national reserves for foreign exchange and gold as of December 31st, 2017, were $113.3 billion and $200.1 billion for Poland and Germany, respectively. The countries use these reserves to control the exchange rates of their national currency. 2017 taxes and other revenues collected in Poland was 39.5 % of the country's GDP while that of Germany was 45% of the country's GDP. The tax and revenue collections percentage of the GDP are almost similar.

Germany boasts of a highly skilled labor that drives a capital-intensive kind of economy. This leads to exportation of quality finished products that generate high revenue for the country. However, it faces demographic challenges to sustain its long term growth due to the low fertility rates and increase in the net immigration into the country. This increases pressure on the country's social welfare and the country may need to have structural reforms. Likewise in Poland, there is a huge outflow of educated citizens to other European countries and the country has to work on stemming this emigration (Dunsch, 2016). Structural reforms would be necessary in Poland due to the demographic contraction as a result of persistent low fertility rates that would affect the workforce in future. As per the year 2017, Poland had a labor force of 17.6 million while Germany had a labor force of 45.9 million in the same year. Suffice it to say that Germany has a larger workforce than Poland.

The industries in Poland include machine building, iron and steel, coal mining, chemicals and textiles. Germany's economy also consists of similar industries but in their case, they are more technologically advanced in the production of iron, steel, coal, cement, chemicals, machinery and textiles. In 2017, Poland's exports were worth $224.6 billion while that of Germany was $1.434 trillion. Germany's export partners are the U.S, France, China, Netherlands, Italy, and Poland, with the U.S. contributing to 8.8% of the total exports of the year 2017. In the same year, Poland's main export partner was Germany contributing to 24.7% of the total exports. Other export partners were the Czech Republic, U.K., and France. It is worth noting that the two countries trade with each other more frequently.

Social differences

The main social difference between Germany and Poland is that Germany is an old and well-developed country. There is also a high wage and high social welfare in the country due to its technological advancement aspect and highly skilled labor. These aspects have led to improved standards of living (Tang, Werner & Karwowski, 2016). However, Poland is an almost highly developed country with a moderate welfare system that has been recently established. The welfare system is somehow low as compared to that of Germany. Germany has a high number of numerous people. These groups of numerous people seem to invest more in the country, thus increasing the nation's overall productivity. Unlike in Poland, Poles are divided between the poor and the middle class.

Germany is a multicultural nation whose population entail of 20 million people of immigration roots. On the other hand, Poland is a one nation country with people of one origin. It is only until recently that they started hosting other immigrants. 96.9% of the population in Poland is the Polish people, while the rest percentiles are immigrants (Stodolska, Peters & Horolets, 2016). In Germany, 87.2% are the Germans, while the rest percentile consists of immigrants. The official languages spoken by these people are Polish in Poland and German in Germany. Catholicism is the main religion practiced in Poland, where around 85.9% of the population proclaim the Catholic faith while in Germany, 28.2% of the population subscribe to the Roman Catholic religion.

Both countries have a population that mostly consists of relatively older adults, with most people falling between the brackets of age 25-54 years. The median age as of 2018 was 41.1 and 47.4 years in Poland and Germany, respectively. Both countries have a meager population growth rate of -0.16% and -0.17% in Poland and Germa...