The German Democratic Republic, commonly known in English as East Germany or the GDR, was a Marxist-Leninist communist state that existed from 7 October 1949 to 3 October 1990. Politics were dominated by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) which ruled the country as a one-party state for most of its existence. The Constitution of East Germany created a liberal democratic socialist republic from 1949 until 1968, when a new constitution formalised many of the Marxist-Leninist practices including the "leading role" of the SED.

East Germany was officially governed by a parliamentary system with power invested in the elected Volkskammer, the State Council (from 1960), the Council of Ministers, and the Supreme Court. The SED instituted a de facto Stalinist political system based on the Soviet Union where actual power was held by the SED's Politburo, maintaining a facade of democracy with rigged elections, and all political opposition was subjected to widespread repression.

The SED relinquished control during Die Wende in 1989/1990 and rebranded itself as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) before the 1990 East German general election, the only free election in East Germany, winning 16% of the vote. East Germany ceased to exist following German reunification seven months later. The PDS eventually merged with the Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice to form the modern Die Linke in 2007.

The German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany) was founded on 7 October 1949 with the promulgation of the 1949 Constitution. It was formed with the support of the Soviet Union from the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany, in response to the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG or West Germany) in May. It was founded by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) which was created in 1946 through the forced merger of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) branch in the Soviet Zone. The SED was intended as an equal partnership but, with heavy Soviet influence, KPD members would soon come to dominate and it emerged as a Marxist-Leninist communist party modeled on the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. East Germany, as a satellite state of the Soviet Union, would undergo rapid Sovietization in mid-1950s, and it would become a member state of the Eastern Bloc and Warsaw Pact.

According to the 1949 Constitution of East Germany, based on the liberal Weimar Constitution, it was a liberal democratic socialist republic. Officially, it had a parliamentary system of government with the Volkskammer as the legislature and supreme state organ of power seated in East Berlin. The composition of the Volkskammer was determined by general elections in East Germany held every four or five years. The SED won a majority with at least 98% voter turnout in every election, governing as the largest party of the National Front of Democratic Germany, a socialist parliamentary group. This included four other "blocpartei":

Non-parliamentary mass organizations were included in the National Front which nevertheless played a key role in East German society, such as the German Gymnastics and Sports Association (Deutscher Turn- und Sportbund or DTSB), the People's Solidarity (Volkssolidarität, an organisation for the elderly), and the Society for German–Soviet Friendship. The Volkskammer also included representatives from the mass organisations like the Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend or FDJ), or the Free German Trade Union Federation. In an attempt to include women in the political life in East Germany, there was even a Democratic Women's Federation of Germany with seats in the Volkskammer.

The SED established a de facto political system modeled on the government of the Soviet Union: a Stalinist, one-party Marxist-Leninist communist state with itself as the vanguard party. All decisions, in practice, were made by the Politburo of the SED's Central Committee rather than the Volkskammer. The Central Committee and the Volkskammer served to rubber-stamp the Politburo's decisions, and the Council of Ministers was tasked with implementing them. The General Secretary/First Secretary of the SED was the most powerful position and the effective leader of the country. The political system in East Germany was totalitarian and authoritarian, particularly from the early 1950s, with any form of opposition or dissident activity being met with repression from the Ministry of State Security (Stasi).

Elections in East Germany were subject to open electoral fraud: voters only had the option of approving or rejecting a single "united list" of National Front candidates. There was no secret ballot and voters that rejected the National Front list, or struck candidates from the list, faced consequences from the state. The purpose of the National Front was to give the impression of a democracy governed by a broad-based coalition. In fact, all parties and mass organizations were subservient to the SED, and had to officially accept the SED's "leading role" as a condition of their existence. The other purpose was to catch parts of East German society that would ordinarily not be represented by the SED, a nominal workers party. For example, the CDU was directed to the large number Christians in the GDR, the NDPD at former Nazi Party members, and so on. The CDU and LDPD were formerly independent, while the NDPD and DBD were created on the instigation of the SED. All of these parties were subservient to the SED, which per the constitution was the ruling party, and had to espouse socialism. The number of SED members on the list were always the majority because many candidates of the National Front's mass organizations were also SED members.