The Europeanisation of the German Bundestag: Institutional change and informal adaptation

At first glance, the Europeanisation of the German Bundestag seems quite straightforward: in reaction to the process of European integration the Bundestag acquired a set of comparatively strong participation and scrutiny rights in EU politics. It therefore seems rather astonishing that German members of parliament make only very little use of these rights. Different explanations have been put forward in the literature, such as the complicated decision-making system of the EU and the government's gate-keeper position within it, institutional flaws of the German scrutiny system as well as the overall consensus on European integration and the low electoral salience of EU issues. The paper contributes to this discussion in two respects: On the one hand, it offers an additional explanation for the infrequent use of formal instruments. The main argument is that the formal instruments of scrutiny in EU affairs are incompatible with both the overall logic of a parliamentary system as well as the challenges of policy-making in the EU multilevel system. On the other hand, the paper argues that the exclusive focus on the use of formal parliamentary scrutiny rights leads us to overlook more informal means of parliamentary influence and therefore to underestimate the involvement of German parliamentarians in EU affairs. Thus, in order to fully assess processes of parliamentary Europeanisation, we need to take forms of informal or strategic Europeanisation into account.     

A Predictive Test of Voters' Economic Benchmarking: The 2013 German Bundestag Election

Do voters judge their national economy relative to economic performance abroad? In 2013 we took advantage of the German Bundestag election to test this hypothesis predictively. Nearly two months prior to the election, we published an election forecast relying on a theory-driven empirical model of election outcomes that draws on previous election outcomes; characteristics of the government and of voters; and, most originally, the relative economic performance of Germany (‘benchmarked' growth) in comparison to the three other most important economies in Europe – France, the UK and Italy. Our forecast put the outgoing coalition government of CDU/CSU and FDP at 47.05 per cent of the popular vote deviating from the actual outcome of 46.3 by 0.75 points. This makes our forecast one of the most accurate in this election cycle. Despite one-and-a-half months of lead time, our forecast performed on par or slightly better than the last poll results issued only two days before the election.     

Pathways to Karlsruhe: A Sequence Analysis of the Careers of German Federal Constitutional Court Judges

Judges of the German Federal Constitutional Court can be seen as both judicial and political elites. Yet up to now there is no systematic work on the Court's' judges and especially their careers prior to their appointments. Using sequence analysis, this article identifies four relatively distinct clusters of career characteristics: academia, administration (and administrative courts), ordinary jurisdiction and politics. Judges whose career background is limited to the judicial sphere mostly advance from a level below the Länder to the Länder and then on to the federal level, while those with a background in politics or administration switch less often among them. Furthermore, little evidence was found to suggest that differences in the judges' career paths can be explained by reference to the body that elected them (Bundestag or Bundesrat) or the party that nominated them (CDU/CSU or SPD). The article also illustrates the possibilities of sequence analysis for elite studies.     

Forecasting the 2013 German Bundestag Election Using Many Polls and Historical Election Results

This article reports on an attempt to forecast the outcome of the 2013 election to the German Bundestag. In contrast to the predominant academic approach to forecast incumbent vote shares from measures of government popularity, economic conditions and other fundamental variables, we entirely relied on data from published trial heat polls. Opposite to common practice in the news media, we did not take isolated polls as election forecasts in their own right. Instead, we used historical data to assess empirically the relationship between polls and election outcomes, and combined extrapolations from current polls in a Bayesian manner. The forecast was published one month ahead of the election. The retrospective evaluation of our method was added after the election. While our method is parsimonious and provides a large lead time, the performance at the 2013 election was underwhelming. We offer additional suggestions how the approach can be improved in future scenarios.     

Reconciling Intra-Party and Intra-Coalition Dissent in Morality Politics: Parliamentary Debates on Marriage Equality in the German Bundestag

This article analyses parliamentary debates on marriage equality in Germany to understand what factors shape how parties deal with morality politics argumentatively. I argue that the internal divisions of parties and their coalition parties are crucial for the argumentation strategies used in parliamentary debates on morally charged wedge issues. Internally divided parties and parties that must be loyal to coalition partners confronted with internal divisions are likely to employ a discursive avoidance strategy to mitigate the potential for intra-party and intra-coalition polarization. To test this empirically, I examine the speeches of the German Bundestag on the Life Partnership Act in 2000 and Marriage for All in 2016 and 2017. The qualitative content analysis confirms my argument: The internally divided CDU and its coalition partners applied avoidance strategies by framing the issue primarily around constitutional principles and using procedural arguments, rather than framing the discourse as an issue of morality politics.

Zusammenfassung

Der Artikel analysiert parlamentarische Debatten zur Anerkennung gleichgeschlechtlicher Partnerschaften und Ehen in Deutschland, um zu verstehen, welche Faktoren die Argumentationen von Parteien im Wettbewerb um Moralpolitik beeinflussen. Ich argumentiere, dass die interne Spaltung von Parteien und ihrer Koalitionsparteien entscheidend für die Argumentationsstrategien ist, die in parlamentarischen Debatten über moralisch aufgeladene „wedge issues “verwendet werden. Intern gespaltene Parteien und Parteien, die loyal zu Koalitionspartnern sein müssen, die mit internen Spaltungen konfrontiert sind, verwenden eine diskursive Vermeidungsstrategie, um das Potenzial für eine innerparteiliche und koalitionsinterne Polarisierung abzuschwächen. Das Argument wird anhand einer qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse von Reden von Abgeordneten des Deutschen Bundestages zum Lebenspartnerschaftsgesetz im Jahr 2000 und zur Ehe für Alle im Jahr 2016/2017 bestätigt: Die innerparteilich zerstrittene CDU und ihre Koalitionspartner wendeten Vermeidungsstrategien an, indem sie das Thema in erster Linie in Zusammenhang mit verfassungsrechtlichen Grundsätzen thematisieren und prozedurale Argumente verwendeten, anstatt den Diskurs als eine moralpolitische Frage zu gestalten.

Résumé

Cet article analyse les débats parlementaires afin de comprendre les facteurs qui façonnent la manière dont les partis traitent la politique morale sur le plan argumentatif. Je soutiens que les divisions au sein des partis et entre les partis d'une coalition représentent un facteur décisif dans les stratégies d'argumentation utilisées dans les débats parlementaires sur les questions morales portant à controverse (« wedge issues »). Les partis divisés en interne et les partis devant rester loyaux envers leurs partenaires de coalition, eux-mêmes confrontés à des divisions internes, sont susceptibles d'employer une stratégie discursive d'évitement pour atténuer le potentiel de polarisation intra-parti et intra-coalition. Pour tester cela empiriquement, j'examine les discours du Bundestag allemand sur la loi relative au partenariat de vie enregistré en 2000 et celle instituant le mariage pour tous en 2016/17. L'analyse qualitative de ces textes confirme mon argument: La CDU, divisée en interne, et ses partenaires de coalition ont appliqué des stratégies d'évitement en abordant la question principalement autour des principes constitutionnels et en utilisant des arguments procéduraux, plutôt que de cadrer le discours comme une question de politique morale.     

Rebels and rebellions: Conservative MPs in the 1992 Parliament

During the 1992 Parliament the Conservative Party lost its reputation for unity. The parliamentary party, said by some to be unusually rebellious, got the blame. This article places the levels of dissent in the division lobbies of the House of Commons in historical perspective, comparing the 1992 Parliament with those before. Contrary to received wisdom, Conservative MPs were not noticeably more rebellious after 1992. The article also considers the ideological and factional basis of the rebellions. Because the rebellions in Parliament focused almost exclusively on Europe, the party remained one of tendencies, albeit well-organised and cohesive tendencies, rather than factions; and the extent to which the rebellions cut across existing ideological cleavages has been overstated.     

The Financialisation of Sovereign Debt: An Institutional Analysis of the Reforms in German Public Debt Management

This study explores the financialisation of sovereign debt through an in-depth study of institutional change in German debt management. Between 1998 and 2006, the Ministry of Finance fundamentally altered the management of federal public debt by not only disempowering the Bundesbank and Federal Debt Administration as debt managers and outsourcing this task to a new agency, the Federal Finance Agency; moreover, the conservative debt strategy was replaced by strict market orientation. Conceptualising this change as institutional innovation, the paper argues that the Ministry of Finance played a leading role in the reform process. It shows that the arrival of the Euro brought with it a power struggle between the Ministry and the Bundesbank. The evidence fits better the concept of institutional innovation as a result of entrepreneurship than approaches which conceptualise institutional innovations as consequences of profit maximisation or layering and displacement.     

A Third Term for a Popular Chancellor: An Analysis of Voting Behaviour in the 2013 German Federal Election

The 2013 federal election led to a considerable change in the German party system. Yet Chancellor Merkel secured a third term, once again, as chancellor of a grand coalition. This analysis shows that Angela Merkel was much more popular than her SPD challenger, Peer Steinbrück. Moreover, she was perceived as somewhat more representative of the values and policies of the party she stood for than her competitor. What is more, the candidates' perceived representativeness conditioned the impact of candidate preferences on vote choice in complex ways. As a result, support for Angela Merkel was likely to translate into votes for the CDU/CSU, whereas support for Peer Steinbrück did not easily earn SPD votes. The article thus concludes that, in contrast to her challenger, Angela Merkel was an electoral asset for her party. The CDU/CSU's impressive result in the 2013 federal outcome can thus be interpreted, to some extent, as reflecting its leader's popularity.     

欧债危机:一个德国视角的评估

从德国的视角看,欧债危机的根本原因在于PIIGS国家("欧猪国家")在享受超出自身收入水平的生活方式上走得太远,导致其政府的持续预算赤字。一位著名的美国经济学家持不同见解,他认为成员国的竞争力差异以及加入共同货币区导致的政策工具的丧失使得欧元已经失败。德国政府相信有两个政策工具可以解决危机:第一,制定强制所有成员国采取预算紧缩的财政协议;第二,创建一个基金用以救助受到破产威胁的成员国政府。包括发行欧元区共同债券和赋予欧洲中央银行以最后贷款人地位在内的一系列政策措施都被德国政府拒绝了。德国政府强烈反对将欧元区转化为转移支付联盟。而由德国政府提出的政策措施也都归于失败,因为预算紧缩政策导致了"欧猪国家"的经济负增长,进而加大了其减少公债的难度。在德国政府看来,为保证"欧猪国家"不放松降低财政赤字的努力,继续保持金融市场上的压力是必要的。笔者认为,除非德国政府采取针对经济弱国的更加合作的态度,否则欧元区将极有可能归于终结。     

Voter Participation in the 1998 Bundestag Elections: A Theoretical Modification and Empirical Application of Downs' Theory of Voter Participation

This article seeks to contribute to the illumination of the so-called 'paradox of voting' using the German Bundestag elections of 1998 as an empirical case. Downs' model of voter participation will be extended to include elements of the theory of subjective expected utility (SEU). This will allow a theoretical and empirical exploration of the crucial mechanisms of individual voters' decisions to participate, or abstain from voting, in the German general election of 1998. It will be argued that the infinitely low probability of an individual citizen's vote to decide the election outcome will not necessarily reduce the probability of electoral participation. The empirical analysis is largely based on data from the ALLBUS 1998. It confirms the predictions derived from SEU theory. The voters' expected benefits and their subjective expectation to be able to influence government policy by voting are the crucial mechanisms to explain participation. By contrast, the explanatory contribution of perceived information and opportunity costs is low.     

A Feminised Style of Politics? Women MPs in the House of Commons

One hundred and one Labour women MPs were returned to the House of Commons at the 1997 general election. Constituting 24 per cent of the Parliamentary Labour Party, they were, according to critical mass theory, a 'tilted group' and in a position to effect change. Drawing on 23 in-depth interviews with Labour women MPs first elected in 1997, this article establishes that many of them believe that women politicians practise politics in a feminised way. This claim is, however, premised upon gender rather than sex differences and party identity is also identified as an important determinant. The women MPs' perception that women's style is less legitimate than men's is explored through a discussion of the newly elected Labour women MPs' loyalty in parliamentary votes.     

German Idiosyncracies: Revisiting the finanzausgleich debate

Finanzausgleich. Die Verteilung der Aufgaben, Ausgaben und Einnahmen im Recht der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der Europäischen Union. By ULRICH HÄDE. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1996, pp.619, DM 218.

Rechtliche und finanzwissenschaftliche Probleme der Neuordnung der Finanzbeziehungen von Bund und Ldndern im vereinten Deutschland. By KLAUS‐DIRK HENKE and GUNNER FOLKE SCHUPPERT. 1. Aufl., Baden‐Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1993, pp.119, DM 41.

Der bundesstaatliche Finanzausgleich in Deutschland. Geschichtliche und staatsrechtliche Grundlagen. By JÜRGEN W HIDIEN, 1 Aufl., Baden‐Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1999, pp.885, DM 198.

Die Verteilung der Umsatzsteuer zwischen Bund und Ldndern. By JÜRGEN W. HIDIEN. 1. Aufl., Baden‐Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1998, pp.463, DM 98.

Handbuch Länderfinanzaugleich. By JÜRGEN W HIDIEN. 1. Aufl., Baden‐Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft 1999, pp.710, DM 178.

Finanzverfassung und Föderalismus in Deutschland und der Schweiz. By ALEXANDER JÖRG, 1. Aufl., Baden‐Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft 1998, pp.336, DM 88.

Bundesstaatliche Finanzordnung. Grundlagen, Bestand, Reform. By IRENE KESPER. 1. Aufl., Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft Baden‐Baden 1998, pp.430, DM 98.

Der Finanzausgleich zwischen Bund und Landern. By Stefan Korioth. Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1997, pp.733, DM 228.

Grundlagen des Finanzverfassungsrechts (Sonderausgabe des Bonner Kommentars zum Grundgesetz ‐ Vorbemerkung zu Art. 104a bis 115 GG). By KLAUS VOGEL and CHRISTIAN WALDHOFF 1. Aufl., C.F. Müller Verlag, Hüthig GmbH Heidelberg 1999, pp.617, DM 178.