The politics of corporate crises in West Germany

This article examines the experience of corporate crisis in the major industrial economy of Western Europe. West Germany's experience of corporate crisis is analysed by reference to its legal framework, political context and economic history. Particular attention is given to two modes of crisis management: ‘bank‐led’ rescue and ‘the crisis cartel’. Case studies include AEG, Grundig, the steel corporations of the Ruhr and the Saar, shipbuilding corporations and Krupp. The argument draws on the evidence of mounting problems of corporate crisis management to assess the prospects for the theory and practice of the social market economy in West Germany.     

Budgetary politics in the federal republic of Germany

The purpose of this article is to advocate a more careful approach towards the analysis of the factors that are decisive for the comparative evaluation of system performance and the reasons given for output variations. Using budgetary politics in the Federal Republic of Germany as an example, it is argued that the majority of the ‘Does politics matter?’ literature is oversimplifying reality by overlooking the institutional variable.     

The rise and decline of new politics and the Greens in Sweden and Germany

Abstract. The failure of the Green parties at recent elections in Sweden and Germany makes it necessary to consider the future of 'new politics' in each country. With reference to modern organisation theory, the goal of this article is to explain the different character of the Green parties in both countries in terms of external political resources. Above all the features of new social movements on the one hand and the different party systems on the other are of particular importance. It is argued that both factors have an impact on the cleavage structure and social change in Sweden and Germany, as well as being important for the organizational survival of Green parties in both countries. The conclusion is that 'new politics' and the Greens have a more promising future in Germany than in Sweden.     

The difference that empire makes: institutions and politics of citizenship in Germany and Austria

Austria has had much higher naturalization rates than Germany. Two arguments are made based on institutional regime theory and left political power. First, the imperial experiences of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that colonized 11 different nations explains Austria's relative openness, and the monocultural experience of the German Reich that tried to impose German language and culture on partitioned Poland casts light on Austria's open and Germany's rather closed approach to ethnic integration. This first argument covers initial state formation focusing on ethnicity, the Austrian colonization versus German occupation, different ethnicities and languages in the military and bureaucracy, and comparisons involving the partition of Poland and religion in Bavaria. The second argument is a political analysis of legislation concerning how institutionalized regime types and left/green party power influenced the naturalization policies that were enacted into law from 1946 to 2005. The post-World War II analysis shows the positive effects of left/green party power on naturalization, but the institutional regime hypothesis is still necessary to fully explain these differences. In the end, regime differences, and in the later period, left/green party power demonstrate why these two very similar countries have such different naturalization policies.     

论中国宪法私法化——兼论宪法解释体制改革

所谓中国宪法司法化第一案的诞生,引起了国内理论界热烈的讨论,其中最重要的论题之一就是宪法在私法领域的适用.本文将在前辈讨论的基础上着重探讨中国宪法私法化的必要性、私法化道路上的障碍以及可供参考的解决方法,并将重点讨论宪法在私法领域内适用的必要步骤之一--宪法解释体制改革.     

Race,Islamophobia and the politics of citizenship in post-unification Germany

ABSTRACT

In the immediate aftermath of German reunification, as in the wake of the recent humanitarian crisis, Germany experienced notable ‘peaks’ of racist agitation and violence. In the 1990s, as today, the post-Communist eastern regions of Germany tend to be perceived as the hub of such racism. In this article, Lewicki revisits both ‘peaks’ via an examination of numerical evidence for verbal and physical racist violence in the former East and West of Germany. Rather than conceiving of racism as ‘cyclical’ or a specific legacy of the Communist dictatorship, her analysis suggests that political projects in Germany’s past and present have retained distinct structural incarnations of race. Far-right activists could thus successfully channel animosities resulting from the terms of unification into nationalist and racist resentment: momentarily more so in the East, but increasingly also in the West. The politics of citizenship, Lewicki argues, has provided a key means of perpetuating, reaffirming and cementing racialized hierarchies in the two post-war German states, but also in reunified Germany.     

Intellectuals and Politics in Western Germany

The present political characteristics of German intellectuals, now largely associated with a left‐wing outlook, can be traced back to the effects of dictatorship and to the ‘restoration’ they perceived in the post‐war period. Their first reaction was a mood of resignation, which only changed during the upheaval of the students’ revolt in the 1960s. Many intellectuals then adopted extreme Marxist positions and have had a pervasive influence in various cultural spheres. Their intolerance of piecemeal reform, intransigence, and polemical style have made fruitful dialogue impossible. They have abandoned empirical criteria of judgment; the loss of realism which has resulted means that these intellectuals cannot be true to their calling.     

Recasting German federalism? The politics of fiscal decentralization in post-unification Germany

Why did the ideas of fiscal decentralization gain such political currency in Germany in the late 1990s but meet such a relatively dismal political fate by the Summer of 2001? In answering this question, I propose a framework centered around the interaction of ideas and state institutions to study the politics of fiscal decentralization in advanced democratic nation-states. First, I show that the new set of politically-charged ideas of fiscal decentralization which gained political weight in Germany in the late 1990s were driven by economic problems associated with German unification, the increasing popularity of “fiscal federalism” in German policy circles, and a centerperiphery conflict within German political parties. Second, my analysis explains the political failure of these ideas despite their apparent popularity among political and policy elites. Here, I focus on the role of the upper house of the German parliament in order to explain why these ideas have had such little policy success. After demonstrating that the long-standing tradition of “cooperative” federalism has largely survived German unification, the paper concludes by discussing the potential impact of the European Union’s 1997 Growth and Stability Pact on German federalism.     

Interesting but irrelevant: Social capital and the saliency of politics in Western Europe

Abstract. Many explanations of political involvement are based on the idea that higher levels of resources will be matched by higher levels of political involvement. Yet these kind of interpretations seem to overlook the fact that resources potentially increase individual autonomy and widen the scope of alternative actions, and so facilitate a decrease of political involvement. The analyses presented here are based on the rather paradoxical expectation that we will find a higher level of subjective political interest and, simultaneously, a lower level of political saliency among people commanding relatively high levels of social capital or other resources. The empirical evidence available for Western European countries in 1990 and 1998 essentially confirms the notion of diverging consequences of social capital (and other resources) for political involvement. People combining high political interest with a low saliency of politics are labelled spectators here. For them politics has lost its obligatory character – it is interesting and probably important to follow what goes on in this area, but compared with other matters its relevance is relatively low. Besides, a strong gender bias still can be found for each and every aspect of political involvement.     

Issue definition, political discourse and the politics of nationality reform in France and Germany

Abstract.  This article examines reforms to citizenship, a highly politicized issue, in France and Germany in the 1990s. It begins with the fact that, against a dominant strain of scholarly thought emphasizing path dependence and policy continuity, nationality law was reformed four times in the two countries. Taking this puzzling outcome as its starting point, the article attempts to account for the evolution of nationality law in the two countries. The argument has three components. First, following a now-established line of research, we argue that the terms of political debate have sharply narrowed since the Second World War. Appeals to ethnic bases of identity, national hierarchies and racial homogeneity, easy and natural before 1945, are now politically unacceptable. Second, this narrowing of the terms of discourse has not eliminated political debate over concepts of nationality, belonging and integration, but rather shifted it to a narrower sphere. In other words, political actors express their support for integration (as demanded by political necessity), but seek to redefine integration in a manner that continues to serve exclusionary ends. Third, the eventual policy outcome in citizenship reform reflects in large measure the definition that emerges triumphant from this battle over discourse. The article ends with a reflection on the broader role of argument, language and strategy in the study of comparative politics.     

The politics of productivity and the politics of anti-communism: American and European labour in the Cold War

The ‘politics of productivity’, an attempt to raise levels of industrial productivity in Europe by transcending class conflict and creating a consensus in society for economic growth, was a prominent element in Marshall Plan thinking. It constituted a central focus of the European Recovery Program's labour programme administered by American trade union officials who staffed the Marshall Plan's Labor Division. This programme was initially supported by the American Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), until hostility to collective bargaining in the local business community, combined with the unwillingness of senior Marshall Plan administrators to insist on collective bargaining as the price of receiving American assistance, blighted the project. This contribution contrasts the CIO's initial support for the productivity programme with the American Federation of Labour's (AFL) more direct strategy of combating communism at the level of organization and propaganda. It concludes by describing how the competing claims of these two American labour organizations for US government funding became a significant factor in American labour's conduct of Cold War politics.     

Employers,the state and the politics of institutional change: Vocational education and training in Austria,Germany and Switzerland

An in‐depth comparison of Austria, Germany and Switzerland shows that the employers' constellation and the elites of the public education administration affect patterns of institutional change. If large firms are the dominant actors and collaborate with elites in the public education administration, institutional change follows a transformative pattern. If small and medium‐sized firms are in a strong position and have the power to influence public elites according to their interests, self‐preserving institutional change results. The article also shows that it is not so much trade unions as small and medium‐sized firms that act as a brake on transformative change. The article adds to the literature of institutional change by arguing that specifying and explaining patterns of institutional change requires that sufficient scope be allowed for actors' creative handling of institutions. It also suggests that in order to differentiate between self‐preserving and transformative change, one has to specify the important institutional dimensions that sustain an institution. The article combines Mill's method of agreement and difference.     

The ‘third way’ and the politics of law and order: Explaining differences in law and order policies between Blair's New Labour and Schröder's SPD

Advocating more repressive law and order policies along the slogan ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ in their election manifesto, Tony Blair in the United Kingdom and Gerhard Schröder in Germany were elected in the late 1990s. Once in power, however, only New Labour substantially toughened law and order policies, whereas the German Social Democrats did not change the legal status quo, to a similar extent, during their mandate. This article tackles this puzzle, arguing that the preferences of the ministers and the formal and informal rules shaping the balance of power in government are crucial to understanding why two governments that initially advocated similar policies adopted a rather different policy stance. The results are based on meticulous process tracing and a series of elite interviews concerning two major topics in the realm of law and order during the 1990s: policies directed at sexual offenders, and policies responding to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.     

The economic tradition and the constitution of science

There has been an institutional turn in the philosophy of science, which has led the discipline to become more concerned with understanding how the scientific process actually works. This paper argues that such a philosophy of science, which lies beyond only proposing a logic of science, has something to learn from economics. Economic thinking can be instrumental in understanding the actual scientific process, and in proposing proper institutions guiding scientific competition. It is, however, also argued that economics would benefit from overcoming the pure logic of choice inherent to the neoclassical approach, by further developing the institutional approach to economics.