Non-State Actors,Political Opportunity Structures and Foreign Relations: The Case of Germany's Federation of Expellees and the ‘Foundation Flight,Expulsion and Reconciliation’

This article examines the political process leading to the creation of the controversial ‘Foundation Flight, Expulsion and Reconciliation’ in Germany. The foundation aims to establish a permanent exhibition by 2016 showcasing the flight and expulsion of up to fifteen million Germans from the East following the Second World War. The foundation was the result of lobbying by the Federation of Expellees (BdV); it caused frictions in Germany's relations with its eastern neighbours and jeopardised Germany's reconciliation process with these states. The process reveals that the structure of Germany's polity, paired with astute alliance building and its members' rhetoric, aided the BdV's cause. Thus, non-state actors can utilise favourable domestic structures for the lack of material resources in order to maximise their lobbying ‘power’. This contributes to the growing literature on reconciliation in international relations which neglects domestic structures as a variable determining reconciliation processes in favour of more normative policy instruments.