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The Social Democratic-Green coalition government’s revision of Germany’s citizenship law marked a significant shift in the boundaries of German national membership. The introduction of jus soli (the principle of territory) has enabled children born of non-ethnic German parents to become German nationals at birth, thereby breaking the dominance of jus sanguinis (principle of descent) in German nationality law. This paper traces the origins of this shift, examining debates over the integration of post-WWII "guest workers" from the 1960s onward. The paper argues that the path to nationality reform is best understood as the unravelling of an institutionalized policy regime in the face of changed socio-political conditions and new principled ideas. The high degree of politicization that accompanied the amendment of Germany?s citizenship law reflects the continuing resonance of descent-based membership among a segment of German political actors and the difficulty of pursuing reforms in lieu of cross-party political consensus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on a specific category of institutions that are, it has been suggested, characteristic of Germany?s ?semisovereign state?, namely ?parapublic institutions?. Parapublic institutions are a heterogeneous group, united by the fact that they bridge the gap between the public and private sectors, and that they carry out important policy functions. Furthermore, they combine a high degree of autonomy in policy making (under a general supervision of the government, which rules out interfering in details), with a high level of expertise. The paper asks how these institutions have coped with the double challenges of German unification and European integration over the 15 years since Katzenstein?s original analysis. Three detailed case studies of parapublic institutions that have been centrally affected by these changes form the core of the paper: they are the Treuhandanstalt (the agency charged with the task of privatisation of the East German state-owned economy), the Bundesbank (the central bank that lost many of its former tasks to the European Central Bank) and the Federal Employment Office (which was challenged substantially after a policy scandal in 2002). The case studies form the basis for assessing the performance of parapublic institutions in a changing environment and help to answer the question whether they can still fulfil their function as ?shockabsorbers? in the political system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of the paper ? European gender equality policy and its implementation in the United Kingdom and Germany ? provides a window on social policy making at the interface between EU and domestic politics. The paper examines the evolution of EU social policy in regard to gender equality in the labor market and analyzes how the British and German governments have implemented EU directives and EU guidelines of the European Employment Strategy into national legislation. The central question of the paper is twofold: How are policy input (EU directives and EU guidelines) and policy output (national legislation) linked differently in the UK and Germany? Under what conditions can welfare state resistance and resilience to reform be overcome in the traditional and new community methods? To explain variation in policy change through EU law the paper focuses on institutional and cognitive veto points and domestic actor strategies evolving around them. To achieve significant policy change through EU resources, i.e. change that does not leave domestic legislation predominantly intact, domestic political actor mobilization evolving around institutional veto points of the EU legal system or new cognitive veto points of the open method of co-ordination (OMC) are essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In already completed papers (Zuckerman, Dasoviæ, Fitzgerald, and Brynin 2002 and Zuckerman, Fitzgerald and Dasoviæ 2002), we show that partisanship is bounded -most everyone never supports one or the other of the major parties prefers its main rival at varying rates. Decisions about partisanship reflect the logic of appropriate behavior, which is torn between processes of social conformity and individualization, and the principles of out-group homogeneity. In this paper, we demonstrate that those who are just entering the electorate also display the characteristics of bounded partisanship. As would follow from studies of social networks and political socialization, the partisan preferences of their parents strongly influence the characteristics of bounded partisanship among the young. As would follow from the logic of appropriate behavior, young persons do not automatically and routinely follow the partisan examples of their parents. For them too, political interest and reinforcing social contexts facilitate the recognition of appropriate behavior. At the same time, our analysis provides very little evidence of young persons taking partisan stances that depart from those of their parents. In the established democracies of Britain and Germany the partisanship of the young tends to follow that of their parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines two competing sets of assumptions about parties' priorities regarding political finance regulations. The central difference between these is whether parties view revenues as a means to a political end, or whether they instead view fund-raising as an end in itself. Each view yields slightly different predictions about the types of reforms various parties are likely to endorse under different political circumstances. The paper examines how well these propositions compare with actual party behavior during party finance reform debates over the past half century in Germany, a country where the issue has repeatedly surfaced. Experiences here suggest that even when scandals lend the issue of party finance high salience, parties are seldom willing to sacrifice sure economic gains for possible political payoffs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two parts. The first presents empirical evidence documenting the transformation of the German financial and corporate governance systems. The second part of the paper explores this case from a path dependency theoretical framework. It is argued that both institutions systems (finance and corporate governance) have moved onto new institutional paths (trajectories). The paper explores in particular the issue of exogenous versus endogenous sources of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the political consequences of the electoral system of the Federal Republic of Germany, recently taken as a model for electoral reforms -or proposal for reform- in several democracies. In the analysis, particular attention is devoted to the political conditions typical of the different phases of evolution of the party system after 1949, with the purpose of inserting the ‘mechanical’ and ‘psychological’ effects of the electoral system in the broader political context. In fact, although the manipulative impact of the electoral system per se on the party system is undeniable in some historical circumstances, exogenous factors proved to be of great importance in enhancing the capability of the electoral system to give shape to the party system. Among such factors could be mentioned the strategies of the bigger parties vis-?-vis the smaller ones during the 1950s, with the parallel implementation of electoral reforms and the formation of ‘strategic’ alliances, as well as the repressive politics against extremists in the same years, the internal changes in the larger parties a few years later, the ‘learning’ process of the effects of the electoral law by the electorate in the subsequent years, etc. The historical analysis is of crucial importance for the correct understanding of the current phase of the German party system and the role of the electoral system in the near future, to which the second half of the paper is devoted. The national reunification of 1990 has brought about higher levels of electoral and parliamentary fragmentation, as well as an increased territorial differentiation of voting behavior, which stand in stark contrast with the stability and defragmentation of the German party system in the previous three decades. In this situation, the electoral system has regained political importance, both for its actual and potential manipulative effects, and for the revitalization of some of its features that had fallen into irrelevance during the previous decades, such as the alternative threshold and the surplus seats mechanism. The analysis of the post-reunification phase of the German party system against its historical background shows however that in the near future the electoral system is unlikely to contain, let alone to reverse, the current fragmenting trends of the party system, should these continue in their present form. The political conditions for electoral manipulation (strength of the PDS and existence of the alternative threshold, opposition of the Constitutional Court to a higher threshold of exclusion, increased influence of the surplus seats on the political equilibrium, etc.) are remarkably different now from those of the past, which leads to think that the near future for Germany will either be one of continuing party system fragmentation and more complicated coalition-building, or of sweeping electoral reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses an often neglected question in labor market research: to which extent do outcomes aggregated on the national level disguise occupational diversity in employment conditions? In particular, how and why do occupational groups differ with regard to the incidence of non-standard employment? To explore these questions, the paper derives a detailed occupational scheme from the literature, capturing the variety of labor market outcomes within countries. In a second step, the scheme is theoretically linked to the topic of non-standard work. It is argued that different degrees of skill specificity across occupational groups produce diverging incentives for flexible and long-term employment, respectively. This leads to the expectation of (some) service-sector occupations showing stronger tendencies towards non-standard employment than those in the industrial sector. Based on European and German micro data, the categorization is used to decompose various labor market indicators. The results clearly demonstrate the unequal incidence of non-standard employment along the lines of the suggested categorization. Moreover, the longitudinal perspective suggests that traditionally functioning occupational groups will be crowded out by more destandardized ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of authors have argued that the decentralized nature of (Sunni) Islam combined with traditional religion-state institutions emphasizing corporatist structures have prevented the successful integration of Muslims into Western European polities. Muslim groups will not establish organizations along corporatist lines because they fear a loss of autonomy. Here it is useful to distinguish between corporatism as a system of interest representation and a policymaking mode. I question this claim focusing on four concrete issues in German debates on the place of Islam in German politics: the recognition of Islam as a corporation under public law, Islamic religious instruction in public schools, Islamic burial, and Halal slaughter. Toward the end of the paper I extend the discussion to Austria and Switzerland. I argue that institutional and structural arguments cannot account for the observed variation across countries and issues. In all three countries there is a corporatist bias in religion-state institutions. In Austria this bias is stronger than in Germany. Yet, in Austria Muslims in the 1970s took up the opportunity presented by legal recognition and established the officially recognized Islamic Religious Community in Austria. The decentralized and nonhierarchical nature of Islam did not present an insurmountable obstacle. At the same time Muslim organizations in Germany have made more progress on a number of issues than in Switzerland.Besides variation across countries I also show variation across issues. In all three countries issues surrounding Islamic burial have been resolved more easily than the other issues discussed in this paper. The lack of recognition as a corporation under public law prevents the establishment of purely Muslim cemeteries in most German Länder, but Länder, cantons, and local communities have found pragmatic solutions to most Muslim concerns. The case of halal slaughter in Germany also shows that the traditional practice of conditioning some religious privileges on corporatist organizational structures can be broken. Thus, corporatist organizational structures, or the lack thereof, present less of a problem for the integration of Islam than is frequently assumed. At the same time, the limited success of round tables shows that corporatist policymaking may not be much of a solution to the existing problems either. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the welfare state literature implicitly assumes that labor movements everywhere would choose roughly the same set of institutions if only they possessed the power resources to do so. Sweden is implicitly or explicitly seen as the model, with a large public sector providing comprehensive social services and income maintenance during sickness, unemployment, and old age. That countries such as Germany and the Netherlands fell short of achieving this standard is typically attributed to the inferior power resources of labor movements in these countries (i.e. they had to share power with strong Christian Democratic and/or Liberal Parties) and/or an unfavorable institutional context. An issue which has received less attention is whether labor movements in Germany and the Netherlands even wanted to follow a more "Swedish" strategy. In short, labor movements have developed their own, nationally distinct understandings of the role of the state in the provision of social welfare and regulating the market. This paper asks how labor movement visions of "the good society" in Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany shaped their responses to pressures for welfare state restructuring in the 1990s and 2000s. To do so, the paper first compares and contrasts the ideas, norms and cognitive understandings embedded in the Swedish, German and Dutch social democratic cognitive framing of the welfare state and asks how these understandings shaped welfare state restructuring processes in the 1990s and 2000s. What were the core values that social democratic parties and unions sought to defend when faced with pressures to reform? How did the embeddedness of norms and cognitive understandings in specific welfare state institutions shape labor's approach to restructuring? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the German political parties' strategies towards immigrant constituencies in the Bundestag elections from 1998 to 2005. Ever since Germany became a country of immigration in the 1970s, two parties have silently profited from the immigrant vote while polarizing the electorate over immigration-related issues: while the Social Democrats (SPD) relied on the working-class Gastarbeiter vote, the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) received a large share of the ethnic German Aussiedler vote. The liberalization of the German citizenship regime in 1999, however, led to an enlargement of the immigrant electorate and changed its long-time equilibrium. Recent years have witnessed an increase in the number of Gastarbeiter and their descendants acquiring German citizenship, while Aussiedler immigration from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union keeps falling. This paper hypothesises that the 1999 citizenship reform has produced a new mobilization scenario, with the parties now actively trying to get electoral support from immigrant constituencies. In order to achieve this, they avoid immigration-related issues and increasingly nominate immigrant candidates in their platforms. Empirical candidate evidence from the IMMCANDS database shows that the German political parties indeed started moving from a polarization to an incorporation strategy in the aftermath of the 1999 citizenship reform. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents empirical results from a study of the transformation of corporate governance regulation in Germany. The German corporate governance regime used to be the prototype of a network-oriented "insider" system. In light of the internalization of trade and finance, the efforts of the European Union to create a harmonized legal framework for the single market and the changing strategies of big corporations and institutional investors, political and economic actors find themselves under increasing pressure to move towards a market-oriented, Anglo-Saxon model. In our paper, we trace the patterns and driving forces of change in two areas of corporate governance regulation, namely internal governance, in particular the composition and the functioning of a company's board, and accounting/auditing. In both cases, we observe a substantial transformation as regulation has been brought more into line with Anglo-Saxon norms and practices. Yet, the comparison of the two regulatory fields reveals significant differences in terms of the outcomes of transformation as well as the driving forces and mechanisms. In accounting and auditing, processes of multilevel coordination entailed a high degree of convergence towards Anglo-Saxon standards and regulatory requirements. Moderate convergence and a much greater stability of the domestic institutional framework can be seen in the case of internal governance, where rule competition instigated regulatory adaptation at the national level. While the two relevant strands of political economy, Comparative Political Economy and International Political Economy, offer important insights for analyzing these changes, both fail to account for the different patterns of convergence and divergence in the two cases. Therefore, we argue that the political economy approaches have to be combined with a policy analysis perspective so as to capture the sectorally distinct interplay of national and transnational actors which was crucial for shaping the processes and the results of regulatory regime transformation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the adoption of e-government reforms, particularly by local governments (cities and counties) in Germany. The paper attempts to answer the question: What factors do elites in the policy network believe are important to explain the adoption and implementation of e-government reforms in Germany? The research uses survey data and interviews with elites in the policy process. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Germany and Switzerland are both countries with a corporate governance system that is usually classified, in opposition to the ?market-centred? corporate governance systems of Anglo-Saxon countries, as belonging to the continental European ?Insider? or ?bank-centred? model. During the last twenty years, in a context of increasing international pressures (mainly linked to the liberalisation of financial markets), the regulatory framework of the two countries? corporate governance systems (company law, financial market regulations and accounting standards) have been considerably reformed towards a more liberal and market-oriented corporate governance system. In this paper, we analyse the political processes that led to these regulatory changes, which are not automatic adjustment and responses to new economic circumstances, but involve policy debates between the economic and political actors. In such a perspective, we can observe that even if the evolution of the regulatory frameworks went in the same direction in both cases, the political processes that led to these policy outcomes were quite different. In Switzerland, with its broad and encompassing political decision-making processes, power relations are very stable and consensual agreements between the major political actors are necessary in order to achieve policy change. Therefore, regulatory reforms in Switzerland were less far-reaching in comparison to the German ones. Regulatory reforms were made possible only because preferences concerning liberalisation of the Swiss corporate governance system of a considerable part of centre-right MPs, with close ties with economic interests, changed at the end of the 1980s strengthening, thus, the ? until then ? mostly social-democratic ?transparency coalition?. In Germany, on the other hand, the preferences of the major political parties and economic actors remained much more stable during the last two decades concerning corporate governance issues: the SPD and the FDP were favourable to liberalisation whereas the CDU defended the traditional system. In this context, changes were made possible not by changing coalitions, but by changing power relations. Once the SPD, acceded to governmental power, quite far-reaching changes were possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British, German, and French states have recently stepped up their actions against racist violence. There are significant policy similarities across the countries, but equally meaningful differences. In relative terms, Britain has focused more of its energies on reforming the police and the judicial process for prosecuting racially aggravated offences; Germany has delegated power and resources to civil society groups for developing programs against right-wing activities; and France has taken high-profile symbolic actions and has begun adapting its educational policies to address racist violence. This paper maps the policy terrain within each country. It also assesses the effectiveness of different policy approaches. It demonstrates that raw statistics on racist violence are inadequate measures of success, and argues that policies must be judged by how societal groups perceive them and therefore by the extent to which they foster national cohesion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines developments in immigration and citizenship policymaking and politics in Canada and West Germany in the immediate post-WWII era. I argue that key events related to the war and its aftermath led to a reappraisal of prewar attitudes toward race and ethnicity both internationally and within the respective countries. I also demonstrate that this reappraisal was limited by the continuing influence of prewar policy regimes. In line with a key postulate of historical institutionalist theory, policymakers in Canada and West Germany reached back to earlier solutions to the migration-membership dilemma when confronted with the challenge of resuming mass migration to meet postwar labor market needs. Although the most egregiously discriminatory elements of past practices were pruned and offensive language in statutes modified, postwar solutions bore an uncanny resemblance to those enacted in the early twentieth century. Thus, Canada sought to facilitate mass migration while simultaneously endeavoring to limit entry as much as possible to whites, while West Germany resumed temporary labor recruitment and restored its descent-based citizenship regime, effectively shutting the door to national membership for foreign "guest workers" and their descendants. Critics of postwar policies took advantage of changed normative conditions to frame their protests. Canada and West Germany?s commitment to ascendant liberal democratic principles put policymakers in an awkward position when confronted with evidence of hypocritical conduct. The discrediting of integral nationalism and scientific racism and rise of human rights granted reformers a powerful discursive grammar with which they could phrase challenges. Thus, while the period was marked by evasion and a good deal of policy continuity, it also gave rise to reform initiatives that would ultimately advance very different answers to the migration-membership dilemma. As such, it truly stood between two worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effectiveness of voluntary gender quotas in German state legislatures between 1990 and 2000. It finds that while quotas did indeed increase the number of women present in state legislatures, quotas did not meet with equal success across the Laender. The political culture of a given state, over and above its political system, best explains the success or failure of voluntary gender quotas in this case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory: Majoritarian and proportional visions of democracy value party competition and coalition government differently. The majoritarian vision puts a premium on decisive, accountable one-party government; the proportional vision emphasizes the better representativeness attained by coalitions. Data: Using election and survey data from German and Spanish regions, this paper compares coalitions to one-party cabinets and different coalition governments to each other. Ideological polarization within cabinets is measured using expert scores. Results: The analysis demonstrates that citizens of German and Spanish regions evaluate one-party governments more favorably than coalitions, all else equal. In the German case, citizen satisfaction also correlates negatively with cabinet polarization. Conclusion: The findings imply that government effectiveness and cohesion matter more than ideology and interest representation at the regional level, and supports the theory of a trade-off between representativeness and implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines locally based web campaigning by parties and candidates in the 2002 German federal election. The main goal is to provide a more systematic insight into why parties and candidates engage in the practice and how they differ in the content they produce. To do this we first review the literature on web campaigning and identify a range of spatial, structural and party-level factors that have been linked to an increased propensity to engage in Internet campaigning. We then test these explanatory variables with data from local party and candidate websites during the 2002 German federal election. Finally we undertake content analysis of the sites and investigate the extent to which differentiation in parties and candidates’ approach to using the medium can be related to party size and its overall goals. Our results show that electoral and political factors are more relevant to explaining the major parties use of the web, while socio-structural features of the constituency explain the minor parties’ activity better. Surprisingly little variance is observed in site content, but party size and outlook does appear to be linked to overall presence online than specific features of sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores why Germany lags in tobacco control legislation domestically and has obstructed tobacco control in the European Union. It explains German policy in terms of the close ties between tobacco companies and the political elite and the effects of the Nazi regime on the fields of public health and epidemiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout Europe, workforces are ageing, and the membership profile of unions is becoming weighted towards older workers and pensioners. How do these changes affect the positions that unions adopt with regard to welfare state reforms? This paper argues that how pensioners are represented within unions, rather than how many pensioners there are in unions, helps shape confederal positions on pension reform. Our theory suggests that labor movements characterized by a high potential for pensioner influence at the confederal level and strong confederal authority over category unions will predispose confederal leaders to support pension reform proposals that involve substantial modifications to the future benefits of current workers, as long as the pensions of most current retirees are not threatened. Evidence from Italy and Germany confirms that the ‘graying’ of union membership per se is unlikely to be the source of union intransigence on pension reform. Our findings suggest that strengthening the representation of pensioner interests within unions may actually help, rather than hinder, the process of long-term pension system reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In examining elections and government formation in Germany one can distinguish roughly three time periods: a ?formative? period lasting until about 1960, a period of stable two-and-a-half party competition with a limited number of coalition patterns in which the FDP played a crucial role, lasting from about 1960 to 1979, and a period beginning in about 1980 which has been characterized by party de-concentration and more complex coalition formation patterns. While the three periods generally apply to both the national and sub-national (Land) levels there are several important exceptions. For example, in terms of national government-formation patterns one could make the case that the second period did not end until 1998 when, with the inclusion of the Greens in the governing coalition, for the first time since 1960 a party other than the traditional three was represented in the federal government. In this paper we shall examine more closely elections and government formation in the latter two time periods and at both the national and sub-national levels in order to determine whether government formation patterns at one level have basically just been replicated at the other level and whether there has been a change over time in that regard. This will be followed by a closer look at the FDP’s ?hinge? role in coalition formation at the national and Land levels. Has the FDP’s role diminished over time? Have the Free Democrats formed coalitions with the same partners at the national and sub-national levels? Or have they formed governing coalitions in the L?nder that deviated from the national government in terms of party composition? Has the rise of the Greens adversely affected the FDP’s ?opportunity structure,? that is, have the Free Democrats been less often in a position to be the majority-maker (purely in terms of numbers) for either CDU/CSU or SPD? Thus, we will also briefly assess the Greens? potential role as a ?hinge? party and the relationship between that role and the formation of deviant/innovative coalitions at the Land level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we suggest new measures that gauge how district level party systems can be aggregated to the national level within a country. These can be used as measures of party linkage across districts. The degree of party linkage, which is the extent to which parties are uniformly successful in wining votes across districts, is an important but neglected issue to understand the nature of national level party system formation. We build on the party system inflation index introduced by Cox (1999), which measures the inflation from the district level to the national level party system size that occurs in the process of party system aggregation. We show that the Cox measure has undesirable properties and offer alternative measures. We first examine the concept of party linkage, followed by the discussion of Cox’s inflation index and its limitations. We then introduce our suggested inflation measures, and compare them with the Cox index by numerical simulation. We then apply our measures to the cases of Germany, India, Italy and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years scholars have devoted substantial attention to the study of collective memory, refining the concept, elucidating the dynamics of persistence and change and analyzing various components. Despite these advances, the study of the political relevance and impact of memory needs to move beyond the focus on elite discourse to delve into the possible impact on public opinion, using quantitative data and methods. This paper attempts to do this through an analysis of the German case, with its past "that won’t go away." What interpretations of the past are the most salient for contemporary generations of Germans? Does the Holcoaust-centered memory dominate, other interpretations of the Third Reich era or more recent epochs? Do the interpretations that exist influence political opinions and values in various political domains? The results from an original representative survey commissioned in August 2000 produced several findings of interest. The Nazi period is still the most salient but more recent periods are starting to intrude. Competing interpretations of Nazism do not exist.: A large majority accepts the Holocaust-centered, Germans -as-perpetrators memory. Few demographic differences emerged, although greater education and more lefitst partisan identification led to a greater acceptance of this elite-validated memory. The biggest exception is age with the older cohorts being much closer to the elite view. Most importantly, strong evidence emerges that the memory and other historical variables exert a strong and independent effect on public opinion and political attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals’ partisanship is conventionally believed to be a highly stable core of the political personality, and an ‘unmoved mover’ of political behavior. In this paper we take advantage of a unique longitudinal database to test the basic premise of partisanship’s exogeneity: the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). Comparing up to 17 panel waves, we find that only a minority of the German electorate appears persistent with regard to partisanship (or independence) over the entire period. Concerning partisanship, change rather than stability is the name of the game. However, in several important respects the degree of change is limited. It is not volatile, and only for a tiny fraction of the electorate do we see patterns that are suggestive of random fluctuation. Using techniques of event history analysis, we discern how these patterns are affected by life-cycle changes as well as by socio-economic features and contextual factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revises and amends the theoretical framework of "the new politics of the welfare state". It examines a deviant case: the partial privatization of public pensions in Germany’s frozen welfare state. After analyzing the paradox of major institutional change in a frozen welfare state, it makes suggestions to improve the three theoretical modules of the new politics framework: the theory of blame avoidance, interest group theories, and path dependence theory. Next it suggests two additional modules called institutional interference and creative opportunism. The argument is an explanation of major institutional change in frozen welfare states requires us to incorporate two additional causal forces for welfare state reform into our framework: the institutional goals and constraints embodied in the new fiscal institutions at the European level and the ideas and interests of governments. It also argues that the reform process is very different from welfare state adaptation to socioeconomic pressures: the politics of privatizing public pensions is highly conflictual and very risky, not negotiated and consensual as the politics of welfare state adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last decade has produced a surge of research on political tolerance in post-communist states. Eastern Europeans have been shown to have a low level of political tolerance when compared to citizens in established democracies. No studies have systemically examined whether intolerant attitudes have actually translated into intolerant public policy in the former Soviet bloc, however. Indeed, the link between attitudes and policy outcomes is only weakly established in western democracies. In this paper I compare implementation of Germany’s federal same-sex partnership law in post-communist eastern German states and in the long-democratic western Länder. I examine whether, as the literature on tolerance would expect, eastern states extended fewer rights to homosexuals than their western counterparts did. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, I find that the partisanship of the state government, rather than the length of experience with democracy, accounts for variance in policy outcomes across Germany. This result can be explained by adding institutional variables -- including elites’ social learning in democratic institutions, constitutional and European Union constraints, and the incentives of Germany’s electoral system -- to the study of political tolerance. While low levels of political tolerance did produce intolerant policies, not all post-communist political elites were intolerant and those who were were also constrained by democratic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates voting participation in three countries in Western Europe - Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway - from the 1960s to the late 1990s. Results show that there is no general trend of decline in turnout. However, aggregate turnout figures show somewhat lower levels in more recent elections. Turning to the individual level, the influence of demographic and attitudinal factors is investigated. Political interest show the strongest impact on electoral participation, generation the second largest. Education has effects in the expected direction. These results point to a ??puzzle of electoral participation??: from turnout statistics one would conclude that political interest should have gone down. However, this is not true. This ??puzzle?? points to the fact that context has to be taken into account. This is done here by relating the judgments about political supply of political parties to turnout. Using the classical rational choice notion of alienation and indifference reveals that for example judgments about political offers are related to turnout, also when controlling for educational level. That this relationship is not just subjective but is related to what parties offer in election campaigns is demonstrated by relating programmatic polarization and differentiation to alienation and indifference. The main conclusion to be drawn from our analyses is, that many variables are related to turnout. However, even if they show to have effects consistently over time and across countries it is obvious that their explanatory power altogether is rather weak. This probably has to do with the fact that electoral participation has a low-cost, low benefit nature. Under such circumstances neither an approach concentrating on resources like the SES model nor rational choice considerations can contribute considerably to the explanation of turnout. On the other hand, these variables obviously matter considerably for turnout, given the differences between different socioeconomic groups, or between those being alienated or not. Since the strength of these effects appears to be shaped by the context of an election, it is worthwhile to investigate to which degree the effects of different variables are shaped by the specific context in a given election, be it the closeness of the race, the campaign strategies, the strategic placement of parties and the like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most established approaches to explain attitudes towards immigration is group conflict theory. However, even though the theory was originally articulated in dynamic terms, previous research has almost exclusively tested it through cross-sectional analyses. Our aim in this paper is to disentangle the dynamic and context-dependent character of ethnic competition from more permanent and structural perceptions of ethnic threat. We do this by estimating fixed and randomeffects logistic regression using the German Socio-Economic Panel. Our findings suggest that a remarkable variance of anti-immigrant attitudes, attributed in previous research to structural positions of social-economic vulnerability, almost vanishes when temporal within-individual variance is modelled. More specifically, a real (rather than expected) and involuntary economic shock like becoming unemployed and being fired has a strong effect on concerns over immigration. Moreover, this effect does not differ across social class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last thirty years, the German party system has undergone four types of change: (1) a decline in the overall vote and seat share for the two 'Volksparteien' (CDU/CSU, SPD); (2) an increased level of fragmentation in the party system; (3) a skew in the party system to the left that has shifted the position of the median legislator; and (4) the emergence of a new territorial cleavage associated with German Unification. This paper focuses on the impact of these changes on the role, status and relative power of the two 'Volksparteien' in the German party system and argues that the changes have had a paradoxical impact. On the one hand, the decline in the overall 'Volkspartei' vote undermines the parties' integrative function and weakens the 'Parteienstaat' principle. But, on the other, the presence within the legislature of three small parties (FDP, Greens, Left Party) rather than just the one (FDP), means that, in most instances no single small party can be 'kingmaker' and, because of their relative positions in ideological space, neither can they easily act in concert to extract concessions from either of the two 'Volksparteien'. In office seeking terms, therefore, the 'Volksparteien' are now less vulnerable to small party threats of a decisive defection to a an alternative coalition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzing turnout in Germany local council elections is of special importance. First, voting is still the most important form of citizens' participation in local politics. Second, there has been a „dramatic" decline in local turnout during the past decade. Third, local government in Germany differs strongly. This variety allows for comparative analyses of institutional differences and their effect on local turnout, holding constant the national context. The question in this paper is: Do local institutions like the electoral systems, the importance of the local councils vis-à-vis the mayors, the combined election of local council and European parliament elections, or national parties affect turnout in German local council elections? The question is answered by using data for more than 10,000 communities from eleven German states between 1998 and 2002. The results show only effects from different electoral systems, which, however, have to be cross-checked by further analyses using other points of time. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the central concepts in political science is representation. It has been studied under theoretical as well as empirical lines of inquiry, both developing their own notions of the subject. Largely missing, however, is the actors' own perspective on this subject: how do politicians and citizens conceptualize political representation? In this paper, I will outline in what ways complex ideas like political representation can be studied empirically by discussing, first, general features of political concepts understood as cultural concepts. Second, I will ask how they match the methodology and methods of interpretive political science. Third, by using parts of my own study on actors concepts of political representation in Germany and the United States, the potentials of this approach will be considered. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the "official stories" of political party finance in the United Kingdom and Germany to explore similarities and differences in the ways that party financing affects democratic governance. It looks at the 2 biggest parties in each of these countries, and asks what the patterns of giving may indicate about the motivations of the donors. this cross-national comparison highlights the British patterns of what looks like donors' pursuit of selective benefits, with a few donors giving at very high levels, with the governing party reaping disproportionate rewards, and with few donors giving across the political spectrum. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that civil society, and more specifically, citizens' intiatives, are crucial actors in German memorial politics. I begin by defining and mapping what I mean by 'mnemonic civil society' and describing what I see as the most important initiators of memorials in contemporary Berlin: citizen's initiatives, interest groups, and quasi-state civil society organizations. I then trace the historical development of the 'history movement' starting in the 1980s as the social foundation of many of today's citizen's initiatives. I describe their main principles of focusing on everyday and local history, political engagement, innovative methods, and decentralization. Finally, I argue that this movement strongly determined memory politics today by influencing public consciousness, sending its members into institutions, changing the relationship between state and civil society, and establishing the citizens' initiative (or at least the pretension thereof) as the primary strategy to acquire a memorial. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past several decades, political parties throughout the developed world have transformed their approach to election campaigning. This transformation manifests itself not only in campaign activities (market research, media management, internet campaigning, etc) but also in campaign organization. Specifically, campaign functions have increasingly been "outsourced": transferred away from party organizations and their full-time staffs into the hands of individuals and firms outside the political parties. In thus re-organizing their campaigns, parties are also re-organizing themselves. This paper turns to economic theories of the "boundaries of the firm" to suggest a theory of the determinants of the "boundaries of party" - that is, a theory of the outsourced campaign. It draws on evidence from campaigns in Germany, Britain, and the United States in assessing the plausibility of its account. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines partisan and legislative tactics employed by Germany's Social Democratic-Green government of Gerhard Schroeder to deal with its main opposition, the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union, during a phase when the latter enjoyed a majority in Berlin's federal council. It compares and contrasts these tactics to those employed by other executives in circumstances of divided government. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about Great Britain's targeted appeasement policy towards Japan and Germany during the 1930s is presented. It discusses the need to incorporate both international politics and domestic distributive consequences in foreign policy models. It examines the Domestic Political Economy model and the competing security preferences of inward and outward oriented blocs within most states.

Assesses the magnitude of the policy changes accomplished by Germany's first coalition between the Social Democrats and the environmentalist Greens. Links between institutional change and political preferences; Institutional arrangements that dominate the state's political economy; Cases of attempted institutional reform.

This chapter’s account of environmental policy making in the Federal Republic described below is framed within a loosely ‘historical institutionalist’ narrative [Krasner, 1988; Hall, 1989; Skocpol, 1992; King, 1995]. German environmental policy, like all institutions, has developed through a pattern of ‘punctuated equilibria’ in which ‘rapid bursts of change (are) followed by long periods of stasis’ [Krasner, 1988: p.242]. In other words, the policy choices made at the time of institutional formation have a persistent and determinate impact over environmental policy making in the long run. In addition, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) have developed which routinise activities and inhibit anything more than incremental change. Over time, the persistence of established policy choices and SOPs can lead to sub-optimal institutional performance and policy failure. The routinisation of environmental policy has led to episodic junctures, in which the ideas that underpin policy making, the policy choices these ideas generate, and the structures of governance that frame policy processes, have undergone rapid change. As is discussed below, environmental policy making remains one of the Federal Republic’s success stories but the upward curve of innovation witnessed since the 1970s has now flattened out. Germany conducts environmental policy from a position of strength, but the success of the recent past now threatens to hamper future improvement. In short, German environmental policy may be suffering from the Law of Diminishing Returns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the state accommodation of Muslims in Germany. Historical background of Muslim mobilization in Germany; Impact of the recruitment halt of 1973 on the immigrant population; Number of anti-foreigner violence acts reported for 1992.

Explores how European welfare states of Germany and Sweden responded to the challenge of reversing early retirement of workers. Differences between the political systems of Germany and Sweden; Explanations of welfare state change; Pattern of success and failure of limiting early retirement in Sweden and Germany.

Drawing on data from the twenty year long German Socioeconomic Panel Study, we show that partisanship is bounded. Almost every West German, East German, and immigrant never supports one or both of the major parties and most people vary support for their party by claiming no partisan preference. Hardly anyone ever selects each of the parties at different points in time. Immediate social networks join with social class and religious factors to structure partisanship. The same social logic underpins partisan choice among West Germans, East Germans, and immigrants, though factors unique to each population are also present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europeanization has brought radical change to the governance practices of all EU member-states, which have in turn clashed with traditional ideas about democracy. These changes in practices and challenges to ideas have profoundly affected all EU member states, but some more so than others, largely as a question of ?institutional fit.? The EU, as a ?compound? supranational polity in which governing activity is highly diffused through multiple authorities, has been more disruptive to ?simple? national polities such as Britain and France, in which governing activity has traditionally been channeled through a single authority, than to ?compound? national polities such as Germany and Italy, in which it has traditionally also been diffused through multiple authorities. The main problem for EU member-states, however, is not so much that practices have changed and that ideas have been challenged than that national leaders have generally failed to come up with new ideas and discourse that reflect the new Europeanized realities. But here, too, institutional differences matter, although to differing effect. Simple polities have greater potential for speaking to changes in practices and challenges to ideas, were they to so choose, because their concentration of authority ensures them a more elaborate ?communicative? discourse to the general public, in which they are better able to speak in one voice and to convey a single message than more compound national polities, let alone the EU, given the number of potentially authoritative voices with differing messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The German government needed to gain support from a majority in the Bundesrat to pass parts of the tax and retirement reform packages that were dependent on Bundesrat approval. However, the opposition parties opposed the reforms and sought to kill the bill in Bundesrat. Since the ruling coalition and opposition parties could not agree on compromises, the government made financial offers to a few state governments ruled by coalitions to change their voting behavior and thus secure a majority in Bundesrat. Not surprisingly, this strategy was quickly compared to U.S. style pork barreling. This article takes up this comparison and comes to the conclusion that the government used the prevalent Parteienlogik to secure passage in Bundestag. In Bundesrat, however, the federal government’s strategy of distributive politics providing pork projects to state coalition governments ran counter to the Parteienlogik. This dual strategy has serious potential of undermining two fundamental institutions in German politics - consensus-orientation of the system as a whole and objectivity (Sachorientierung) in Bundesrat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine elite support for electoral arrangements in Germany and New Zealand. Both countries share a mixed electoral system (MMP) that combines single member districts with proportional representation. New Zealand’s experience with MMP is relatively brief, having held just three elections since 1996 while Germany’s experience dates back to the 1950s. Using data collected through surveys of parliamentary candidates we consider how various factors such as partisan self-interest, minority status, incumbency, ideology, and attitudes about candidate selection structure support for the electoral system. We find strong overall support for MMP in both countries, with small parties and those to the left of the ideological spectrum being most supportive of the system. Those who are dissatisfied with MMP are likely to be those dissatisfied with the candidate selection process or those in the opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new regimes of Eastern Europe vary considerably with regard to their level of democracy (e.g., Bunce 1999). The level of social capital among the polities contributes to the explanation of this cross-national variance. Social capital is said to facilitate the formation of civil society (Stolle 1998; Newton 1999; Uslaner 2002) which in turn promotes political participation and pro-democratic attitudes (e.g. Putnam 2000). The hallmarks of democratic citizenry include regular political participation and civil society involvement (e.g., Tóka 1995; Fuchs and Roller 1998). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1998 and 2001 Germany and Japan enacted pension and tax reforms as part of a broader effort to revive the economy and reduce unemployment. However, the German reform maintained fiscal discipline, a generous pension system (by increasing the role of private pensions), and passive labor market policy. In contrast, Japan resorted to deficit spending, while retrenching public pension and tailoring labor market policies to keep the elderly active. The recent reforms have reinforced the divergent policy paths of Germany and Japan, which can be explained by (a) the arrangements that facilitate coordinated wage moderation where the unions are intermediately strong or decentralized and (b) how different arrangements shape policies to reward wage moderation. By explaining the source of difference among the two top wage coordinated economies, this article cautions against analyses that treat Germany and Japan as similar regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

German companies cooperate in R&D through business organizations and public organizations for applied research. In the US, such cooperation is generally low (though there are important exceptions) since the legal norm is to encourage competition rather than cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at the way foreign policy has provided a site for electoral competition in Germany. It specifically focuses on the two Grand Coalitions with an especial emphasis on the contest between Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. It characterises foreign policy in the Grand Coalition as full of tension and the articulation of differing conceptions between Merkel and Steinmeier.

Attitudes to government responsibilities are compared in Sweden, eastern and western Germany, and the US, 1990-2006, using data from the International Social Survey Program. A substantial convergence in attitudes is found for the period 1996-2006, since Americans become more positive in their attitudes towards state intervention, while opposite trends are found for Sweden and eastern Germany. While attitudinal differences between countries diminish, class differences are fairly stable, as are the differences between men and women and between different labour market status categories. It is speculated that the 'great risk shift' from employers to employees may be part of the explanation for changing attitudes towards redistributive public policies in the US. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]