Sequenzorientierte Policy-Analyse

Due to the structural characteristics of the German system of government, political scientists often assume that policy-making will be affected by gridlock. Assuming exogenous preferences and stable institutional settings, they tend analytically toward interaction studies based on rational choice. As such studies analyze political decisions isolated from changes in social problems, preferences and institutional settings, their explanatory power focuses on incremental policy change. I suggest viewing political decision-making as a dynamic process. To do this, I examine the innovative pension reform initiated by the former Federal Minister of Labor, Walter Riester, looking at the feedback effects of policies on political action. On the theoretical level, this use of temporality is based on the assumption that policies need to have social integrative effects. My main hypothesis is that sequenceoriented analysis in policy studies would enable us to identify endogenous causes of innovative policy change.