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.     

Endeavours to export a migration crisis: Policy making and Europeanisation in the German migration dilemma

This article examines the potential for ‘Europeanising’ the policy process within Germany ‐ examining the constraints and facilitators that have played a defining role in ‘Europeanising’ asylum and immigration issues. It demonstrates that despite the magnitude of the asylum crisis within Germany, blockages evident within the domestic policy process initially prevented a domestic policy solution. In response the federal government instituted a concerted attempt to resolve the issue outside the domestic arena, exporting the issue to the European decisional level. The processes that governed policy making on the European level within this policy sector proved incapable, however, of adequately addressing the issue. Thus, although agreement on the need to harmonise asylum and immigration policies was forthcoming, consensus on the means to achieve and implement substantive policy harmonisation proved elusive. The ‘Europeanisation’ of asylum and immigration policies within Germany has therefore been inherently limited. In response the German government felt compelled to supplement measures agreed at the European level both with a renewed effort within the domestic arena to resolve the constitutional deadlock and through bilateral agreements with their eastern neighbours.     

The PDS in the new German party system

The success of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) cannot be explained solely with a rising tide of GDR nostalgia and/or with the efficiency of PDS members as service providers and advocates at the grass‐roots level. We stress the importance of the PDS as the main political representative of a specific socio‐economic and cultural milie in the former GDR. Furthermore, the article traces the evolution of the PDS from a populist voice of protest of the losers of unification to the beginnings of a new political party. As such it defines its identity more as a radical left‐wing party with strong social libertarian characteristics than a traditional socialist party. The party programme and the electorate of the PDS display remarkable similarities to the fundamentalist wing of the West German Greens in the 1980s, although differences as to the origins of the left‐libertarian ideas remain important. While the PDS seems to have strengthened the significance of the new politics agenda in post‐unification Germany, it is still too early to conclude whether this agenda is firmly rooted in the party or whether it is simply a vehicle to electoral success.     

Europeanisation and De-Europeanisation Dynamics in Turkey: The Case of Environmental Organisations

Abstract

While Europeanisation of civil society in Turkey has received considerable attention, there has been much less interest in how environmental organisations, as key civil society actors, have been affected by Europeanisation/de-Europeanisation dynamics. Interviews with civil society representatives and European Union (EU) and Turkish policy-makers indicate that the EU impact on environmental organisations has been ambivalent, and that Europeanisation dynamics are intertwined with the adverse consequences of these processes. While Turkey’s EU candidacy has empowered civil society through both EU-isation and Europeanisation, there has also been a remarkable rise of scepticism towards the EU’s civil society strategy and the EU has lost its attractiveness as a normative context in environmental debates.     

Preferring Rome to Brussels: Mapping Interest Group Europeanisation in Italy

ABSTRACT

How much do Italian interest groups undertake their advocacy/lobbying activities at the EU level? How often have groups gained access to different EU level institutions? This paper presents an original conceptualisation for the concept of ‘interest group Europeanisation’, which takes into account both the percentage of EU lobbying and access to EU institutions, and assesses the role of national centrality (i.e. access to national institutional venues and self-perceived influence in national policy-making) in determining whether there is more or less interest group Europeanisation. Original data from a national survey conducted on around 500 Italian interest groups are provided. Groups that are at the core of the national interest system are less likely to undertake a large part of their lobbying activities at the EU level, but more likely to gain EU access.     

German Views of the Political System

The article analyses Germans' views of democracy in a longitudinal perspective, especially since unification. It is shown that most Germans in both parts of the country strongly support the idea of democracy although many are at the same time dissatisfied with its practice. This dissatisfaction rests on different motives, ranging from high normative democratic ideals over differences between the normative concept of democracy and the implemented one, including misconceptions of what democracy should or can be to anti-democratic attitudes. At present, Germany faces all these motives of dissatisfaction with democracy, yet in different strata and parts of the society. On the one hand, support for democracy suffers somewhat from declining interest in politics in general, which makes citizens unrealistic about political possibilities and their limits. On the other hand, feelings of economic deprivation, especially in the eastern part, still motivate sceptical views on the western kind of democracy and even in smaller parts of the public an alienation from the democratic credo. Growing inequalities throughout the whole of Germany, especially growing poverty in the lowest social strata, will cause additional systems stress, if it is not moderated by the social welfare system. Thus, the country needs more education in democratic politics for the citizens and more responsive politics on the side of the politicians including more open political structures for citizens' demands and participation.     

Lean production and the German model

Traditionally the German employment system has been hailed as the surpreme example of how a symbiosis between equity and efficiency can be established in an economic system. A defining characteristic of the German employment system is how the world of work is embedded in a highly co‐ordinated system of industrial relations institutions inside and outside the enterprise. The argument of this paper is that this model of labour market organisation is coming under severe pressure as a result of a range of developments, not least the emergence of lean production as a credible alternative system of work organisation. Lean production which is based on techniques moulded and fine‐tuned in Japan affronts virtually every aspect of the prevailing model of economic citizenship in Germany. It is argued that important modifications will have to be made to key industrial relations institutions in the country so that enterprises can respond effectively to the lean production challenge.     

The German Parliament

ABSTRACT

In the words of Louis Marie de La Haye Cormenin (1788-1864), the French lawyer, politician and pamphleteer, in the Livre des orateurs (1843), ‘Four people know the secret of the weakness of the parliamentary orator: his doctor, his confessor, his lover and his stenographer’. Stenographers worked for the first time in 1840 in the Upper House of the Hungarian Parliament. The Bureau of Stenographers as a permanent office was established in 1868. For the Upper House and the House of Representatives, a joint Bureau of Stenographers was organized with two superiors, four auditors, twelve ordinary stenographers and two rotation guides. The stenographers worked at five-minute intervals with no backlog of work. The stenographic report of each session was published half an hour later after the last word had been spoken in the session room. The parliamentary stenographer was required to have a university degree and to take a shorthand exam. Journalists, lawyers, professors and also engineers were employed as stenographers. Reproductive intelligence, quick comprehension, responsiveness, and craftsmanship were some of the qualities that were required to be a qualified parliamentary stenographer.     

Explaining the Development of Aggregate German Party Membership

This article will first introduce a model that explains the development of aggregate party membership on the basis of individuals’ decisions. Important factors explaining the decision to join a party will be analysed in turn. These are incentives and restraints to join the party as well as possible alternatives of action. The second part of the article will illustrate how the membership of relevant German parties developed between 1945 and 2016, whereas the third part will analyse various explanations for this development according to the presented model.     

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.     

German Foreign Policy and the Libya Crisis

German foreign policy has come under scrutiny due to its decision to abstain in the vote on UN Security Council Resolution 1973 in March 2011 on the Libyan no fly zone. Germany's decision not to support France, the UK and the USA ensured that no common EU position emerged and NATO's response to the crisis proved difficult. German foreign policy was caught between enlarging its influence and role in crisis management and reserving the right to reject involvement in operations that do not fit with its national interest. Drawing on the work of Robert Gilpin, the article argues that Germany's decision to abstain on United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 can be explained by understanding the cost/benefit calculations of the German government, pressured by the protracted Eurozone crisis.     

German expellee organisations in the enlarged EU

This article examines German expellees (Vertriebene) as an interest group in domestic and enlarged European Union contexts. While their background and motivations may be unique, they have similarities to other non-party actors aiming to influence political and/or legal processes. German governments have made rhetorical and financial expressions of support but privileged foreign policy considerations over core expellee demands and sought to contain them as an internal issue. EU enlargement and accession by CEE states to its legal bases has been interpreted as opening new possibilities. A ‘Europeanising’ of ‘justice’ may have unintended implications for relations among European states and peoples.     

The diplomacy of German unification

Heinrich Bortfeldt, Washington ‐ Bonn ‐ Berlin (Bonn: Bouvier, 1993)

Elizabeth Pond, Beyond the Wall (Washington: Brookings, 1993)

Stephen Szabo, The Diplomacy of German Unification (New York: St Martin's, 1993).