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Employing new and original survey data collected in three waves (April/May and November 2020 as well as May 2021) in Germany, this paper studies the dynamics of individual-level support for additional health care spending. A first major finding is that, so far, health care spending preferences have not radically changed during the Covid-19 pandemic, at least at the aggregate level. A more detailed analysis reveals, secondly, that individual-level support for additional spending on health care is strongly conditioned by performance perceptions and, to a lesser extent, general political trust. Citizens who regard the system as badly (well) prepared to cope with the crisis are more likely to support (oppose) additional spending. Higher levels of political trust are also positively associated with spending support, but to a lesser degree. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for policy-making and welfare state politics in the post-pandemic era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a theoretical perspective for the comparative analysis of the advocacy behavior of political parties and interest groups in legislative policy-making. It conceptualizes the policy-centered and group-centered statements of political actors as policy frames and constituency frames, respectively. In order to gauge the analytical leverage provided by policy and constituency frames, I will theorize the extent to which political parties and interest groups rely on these two types of frames respectively. The empirical relevance of both types of frames is assessed in two cases of legislative policy-making in Germany. Drawing on parliamentary debates, position papers presented in committee hearings, and press statements released by interest groups, I show, amongst others, that constituency frames play a significant role in these actors' advocacy. While the use of policy and constituency frames varies between radical and moderate parties, there are hardly any differences in their use between parties and interest groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the conflicts associated with the so-called 'Dieselgate' affair. It explains the interaction of civil society, law firms and political actors which reshapes the legal systems in Europe. Once the federal government in Germany had decided that European car owners should not get any kind of financial compensation, a transnational coalition of consumer organizations and law firms successfully initiated a legal mobilization campaign to counteract the political decision. As a consequence, collective litigation rights were strengthened in Germany and at the European level. Theoretically, the paper refers to the literature on adversarial legalism. Whether this judicialized style of conflict resolution is spreading to Europe ('Eurolegalism') has been a hotly debated topic in political science. Our main argument is that the Dieselgate case is a catalyst event to foster the transformation process towards 'Eurolegalism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 2010s, budgetary policy-making in EU member states has been subject to tighter European constraints. While recent research shows the relevance of intergovernmental negotiations for setting European policy priorities, little is known about how much political alternation in government still matters for national budgetary agendas. This paper investigates this question in Germany, one of Europe's most powerful and financially stable countries. Drawing on original data, the paper first shows how political alternation in German cabinets changes governments' budgetary agendas. Secondly, it shows how this alternation also influences the formulation and adoption of European policy recommendations. Based on these findings, the paper argues that governments in financially stable countries can pursue alternative policy agendas, but that these need to find consensus at both the national and European level. The range of alternatives is therefore inevitably contingent upon the national institutional framework and country's relative strength within the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In times of crisis, governments have strong incentives to influence banks' credit allocation because the survival of the economy depends on it. How do governments make banks 'play along'? This paper focuses on the state-guaranteed credit programs (SGCPs) that have been implemented to help firms survive the COVID-19 crisis. Governments' capacity to save the economy depends on banks' capacity to grant credit to struggling firms (which they would not be naturally inclined to do in the context of a global pandemic). All governments thus face the same challenge: How do they make sure that state-guaranteed loans reach their desired target and on what terms? Based on a comparative analysis of the elaboration and implementation of SGCPs in France and Germany, this paper shows that historically-rooted institutionalized modes of coordination between state and bank actors have largely shaped the terms of the SGCPs in these two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While interest groups are often seen as transmission belts of public preferences, little is known as to how they might transmit such preferences. This paper argues that the provision of information is one mechanism through which advocates represent their constituents' interests and analyses who informs policymakers about these preferences and when actors are more likely to do so. The study relies on a new dataset containing information on the arguments advocates made in public hearings that were held on 34 specific policy issues in Germany. The results reveal that the amount of information on public preferences an actor provides is determined by actor type, its public support and position on the issue. Interestingly, information on public preferences is predominantly used by status-quo defenders. This paper contributes to our understanding of interest groups as transmission belts and their potential to enhance governments' ability to respond to public preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the determinants of support for future generations, using novel survey data for the case of Germany. I find significant, but not overwhelming support for prioritizing the needs of future generations vs. the acute needs of present-day citizens. Moreover, individual-level and contextual factors matter too. High-income and highly educated citizens are on average more supportive of the needs of future generations, the elderly and women less so. Left-wing supporters are equally more supportive of future generations, especially supporters of the Greens and those subscribing to 'green-alternative-liberal' values. Supporters of the right-wing populist AfD are most strongly opposed. General political trust boosts support for future generations, and economically thriving local economies are associated with higher levels of support for future generations as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agency has received much attention in recent historical institutionalist theorizing of change processes, but remains largely disconnected from questions about mechanisms that stabilize institutions. To help fill this lacuna, the paper presents bricolage as one key mechanism through which actors stabilize an institutional setup. It suggests that institutions may be defended by keeping intact the institutional logic on which the incumbent coalition is based, but rearrange the salience of the ideational and institutional elements that make up the existing institutional setup. The empirical relevance of the argument is supported through a case analysis of a 1980-reform that could have changed the face of German corporatism, but never was, namely the policy of collective equity funds (Tariffonds). Through process tracing, we explain the fate of the reform with the effectiveness of a last-minute intervention based on a bricolage of the extant institutional logic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term governance has been used in many contexts and meanings. This paper assesses three logics of control widely associated with governance, namely multi-level governance, the regulatory state and performance management. It questions to what extent these logics are present, are reinforcing or are mutually self-destructive in their effects. This paper explores the field of meat inspection as a critical aspect of the Europeanized food safety regime and concentrates on the cases of Denmark and Germany. The paper concludes that the three logics of control's effects are interactive and that, far from being mutually reinforcing, the various logics are mutually self-destructive and destabilizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the role and influence of the EU institutions in major reform negotiations. We argue that one of the paradoxes of European Council dominated decision-making has been the enhanced dependence on EU institutions to translate broad priorities into actual reforms. We substantiate this claim by means of an in-depth process-tracing analysis of the Fiscal Compact. The conventional wisdom is that the Fiscal Compact was a German dictate. Instead, we show that it resulted from a division of labour: political leadership by member states in the control room, and instrumental leadership by the institutions in the machine room. Such instrumental leadership is unjustly depicted as mere facilitation, with little impact on process and outcome. We juxtapose the Fiscal Compact to two similar cases of Germany-led EU reforms (the Euro-Plus-Pact and Contractual Arrangements) to reveal the leadership activities by the institutions and the fingerprints these left in the final outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of European integration in affecting voting behaviour in the 2017 German federal election. Building on a theoretical analysis of EU issue voting, it demonstrates that despite a list of issues on the European agenda, EU-related issues did not play a prominent role in the campaign, nor were issues primarily addressed from a European perspective. Relying on survey data collected before and after the election, the analysis demonstrates that voters perceived parties to differ considerably on EU integration, but they did not care much about it. Attitudes towards European integration and financial aid to EU member states were only mildly related to vote choice in the 2017 election. European integration thus has not yet become a powerful political issue in Germany. The paper concludes by discussing implications for EU issue voting in future German elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I identify whether budgets in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States are punctuated and investigate the variation in budget punctuations over time. Building on stochastic process methods, I find that budgets in all four cases exhibit mostly incremental changes punctuated by extreme shifts. In order to explain variation in budget punctuations over time, I rely on two models: partisan control of government and partisan distance of the assembly. The two models are tested using national budgetary data across all government functions for the four countries from the mid-1960s to 1989. I find that greater distance in strength and ideology among parties leads to increases in the degree of punctuations in the German and the British cases, whereas there is some evidence for the partisan control model in the American cases. In the Danish cases, partisan distance reduces the degree of budget punctuations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How much did national competition policies converge between 1950 and 2000, and what were the forces behind this? These are the questions the paper attempts to answer, for three countries whose competition policies differed substantially at the outset: Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. The paper measures the degree of convergence of national competition policies, and concludes that there has been convergence towards the stricter EU anti-trust norms. This can be explained by neither negative ('the market') nor positive ('the state') integration, as competition policy is one of the few policy areas where the EU has never explicitly tried to harmonize national legislation. Other forces must have been at work. We investigate the role of various actors, which each play a role in three theories of European integration: institutionalism, which stresses the importance of the central European institutions; neofunctionalism, which focuses on international business; and the epistemic community approach, which highlights the importance of transnational expert communities. We find that convergence has been mainly the work of subtle 'topdown' pressure from the CEC and the ECJ ('the courts'), combined with the emergence of an epistemic 'community' of legally trained officials, which has been a channel for the exchange of information, ideas, solutions and arguments between the systems and levels of law. EU case law provided an important model, experiment and source of norms for this community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

German educational spending per student has dramatically declined since the early 1970s. In this paper, we develop a theory of fiscal opportunism and argue that state governments exploit higher educational policies as an instrument of active labour market policy. By 'opening' universities to the masses and the extensive propagation of broader university enrolment during times of economic distress, state governments have an instrument at their disposal for lowering unemployment without generating negative budgetary implications. Thereby, the government pockets voter support not only by diminishing unemployment, but also by providing public goods particularly to the socially disadvantaged. At the same time, the state government risks a deterioration of educational quality owing to decreasing educational spending per student. We test our theoretical claims for the German states in a period ranging from 1975 to 2000 by means of panel fixed-effects models. The empirical results robustly support the hypothesis that rising unemployment ratios lead to increased university enrolment, but also significantly reduce the spending per student. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What have been the consequences of integrating the single market via mutual recognition? Did competitive deregulation result? Or were its implications less significant than expected? In this paper I analyse two previously highly regulated service sectors, insurance and road haulage, and study the impact of European policies in Germany and France. I find that the Council instituted mutual recognition in a restrictive way. This limits its impact on member states, which is moreover mediated by national factors. In both sectors, the use of the freedom to provide services has stayed much below expectations. Consequently, the single market rules have primarily resulted in a liberalization of national markets, where this had not already been achieved, for instance, in Germany. The domestic insurance and road haulage markets have become very competitive, but they remain largely national markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europeanization, differentiated from European integration as the impact of European policies on national policies, practices, and politics, has had differing effects on EU member states, depending upon a number of independent variables. These include the constraints imposed by EU decisions in any given policy area, that is, whether the decisions demand that countries follow highly specified rules of implementation, less specified rules, suggested rules, or no rules at all. But adjustment also depends upon certain mediating factors, including countries' vulnerability to global as well as European economic pressures, their political institutional capacity to respond as necessary, the 'fit' of European policies with national policy legacies and preferences, and the discourses that influence policy preferences by changing perceptions of economic vulnerabilities and policies and thereby enhance capacity. Only by putting the decision constraints together with the mediating factors can we adequately explain countries' differential policy outcomes, whether inertia, absorption, or transformation. To illustrate, this paper considers three countries, France, Britain, and Germany, across a representative range of economic policy areas, including monetary policy, financial services, telecommunications, electricity, transport, and mutual recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did the German government champion a debt-financed and grants-based EU corona recovery plan, despite the country's traditional aversion towards greater fiscal risk-sharing in Europe? To elucidate this question, this article critically assesses different explanatory factors cited in the academic literature and public debate to determine a country's response to pressing challenges. Tracing Germany's approach to the corona pandemic within the EU context, it finds that national material interests rather than (new) economic ideas or party politics were decisive. The timing, scope, as well as the limits of the German-inspired recovery plan for the fight against the corona crisis suggests at least as much continuity as change in Germany's position on EU fiscal policy. Yet, the findings also highlight Germany's enduring, and in fact reinforced, commitment to European integration and its preparedness to provide stability in moments of deep crisis for the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reform capacity of welfare states to adapt to the needs of post-industrial labour markets has been a key question of the welfare literature for the last two decades. In a context of austerity, such adaptations (retrenchment or recalibration) are notoriously difficult because of extremely high levels of support for existing policies, particularly old age pensions. We investigate how the recent economic shock caused by the COVID-pandemic has changed social policy preferences in three West European countries (Germany, Sweden, Spain). Relying on original panel data observing the relative support for social policies before and during the crisis, we show that support for old age pensions has dropped substantially relative to other social policies. This drop can be observed in all three countries and among all ideological and age groups. The drop is strongest among current and soon-to-be pensioners who in turn increased support for benefits to the working-age population. At the expense of pensions, the economic shock has especially boosted support for active labour market policies and (in Germany) childcare services. This shift of support from pensions to social investment policies might have opened up a window of opportunity for recalibrating welfare reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defence integration is frequently in demand but hardly supplied. Sovereignty concerns and a desire for national control constrain integration of the core state power of arms production. The European Aeronautic, Defence and Space (EADS) company (today's Airbus Group) stands out as an exception to this rule. How was this instance of defence integration supplied? We suggest a two-step network mechanism. First, the structure of national networks shapes the capacity for collective action. Centralised networks are better in forming a joint national position than fragmented networks. Second, networks also operate at the transnational level, shift domestic power balances, and enable agreements. Our process-tracing analysis demonstrates how Germany's centralised network smoothly adopted a stance on a European firm under private control, whereas domestic negotiations stalled in France. However, a transnational alliance ultimately posed credible threats of exclusion and could overcome this deadlock. Therefore, EADS was both European and predominantly private. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ratification of EU agreements is characterized by the application of different democratic procedures across member states. Building on the demoi-cratic theory of legitimate global governance, I argue that citizens benchmark their national procedure against highly visible direct democratic ratification votes held in other member states. If citizens experience unequal influence on EU decision-making, the perceived legitimacy of the EU regime erodes. I test this argument with a research design that combines a population-based survey experiment and a quasi-experiment. First, a survey experiment in Germany reveals that information about asymmetric ratification standards decrease fairness perceptions and satisfaction with EU democracy. Second, a natural experiment around the 2005 French vote on the EU constitutional treaty shows that the referendum decreased satisfaction with EU democracy in states with pending and indirect ratification. These findings suggest that asymmetric access of citizens to EU decision-making can decrease popular support for EU governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of research has documented political inequality along class lines at different stages of the representation process. This article contributes to our understanding of unequal responsiveness and its causes with an in-depth study of Germany that investigates the link between preferences and policymakers' decisions. Using an original dataset covering 746 survey questions on specific reform proposals from 1980 to 2013, we provide the first study of a European democracy that investigates whether responsiveness patterns vary between economic and cultural policies or different governing coalitions. We show that decisions are skewed towards upper occupational and educational groups, irrespective of policy type or government composition. These results advance the discussion of potential mechanisms for unequal responsiveness. As privileged groups are overrepresented in parliament, our findings support the argument that the social bias in the make-up of parliaments matters for substantive representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the recent European refugee crisis, more than two million people applied for asylum in Germany. Female applicants stand a higher chance to gain protection than male applicants. Whilst small on average, this gender gap in asylum recognition rates varies strongly across countries of origin which has remained little noticed. We analyse the gender gap in asylum recognition rates for the 56 major countries of origin of refugees whose asylum claims are decided on over the period 2012–2018. We show that both general or gender-unspecific human rights abuses and gender-specific human rights violations are associated with cross-country variation in the gender gap in recognition rates – but in opposite ways. Specifically, we find that the gender gap is lower for refugees coming from countries with worse general human rights abuses in the form of political terror perpetrated by state agents but is higher for refugees from countries with a higher prevalence of female genital mutilation and a higher prevalence of child marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Failing forward describes an endogenous cycle of EU institution-building through lowest-common denominator breakthroughs in Council. This article adds a dynamic called failing outward, in which a powerful country steers EU law and policy from outside the EU. Where strong Council deadlocks persist during crises, and a powerful state possesses a critical, excludable resource, it will make access conditional on EU rules and institutions that reflect its own interests rather than Council compromises. A non-EU institution helps it do this, entrenching conditionality. Repeated institutional fixes follow as the system fails (some) other Member States. This model is applied to Germany's effective authority through the European Stability Mechanism over Council and Commission in determining EMU reforms, including Banking Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EU citizens have rights when living in a member state other than their own. Bureaucratic discrimination undermines the operation of these rights. We go beyond extant research on bureaucratic discrimination in two ways. First, we move beyond considering mobile EU citizens as homogenous immigrant minority to assess whether EU citizens from certain countries face greater discrimination than others. Second, we analyse whether discrimination patterns vary between the general population and public administrators regarding attributes triggering discrimination and whether accountability prevents discrimination. In a pre-registered design, we conduct a population-based conjoint experiment in Germany including a sub-sample of public administrators. We find that (1) Dutch and fluent German speakers are preferred, i.e., positively discriminated, over Romanians and EU citizens with broken language skills, that (2) our way of holding people accountable was ineffective, and that (3) in all these regards discriminatory behaviour of public administrators is similar to behaviour of the general population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the reaction of the EU and eight member states to the refugee crisis 2015/16 as a case of 'defensive integration'. In the absence of a joint EU solution, the member states were left to their own devices and took a series of national measures that varied from one country to the other, depending on their policy heritage, and the combination of problem pressure and political pressure which they were facing. As a result, debordering responses prevailed at first. Only in a second stage a set of national and EU measures aiming at internal and external re-bordering were introduced. At this stage, destination states proved to be the most important drivers of a joint solution, with Germany taking the lead. The overall outcome is an example of 'defensive integration', aiming squarely at joint solutions to stop the refugee flow outside the EU but not to manage it inside the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains variation in European citizens' support for common EU immigration and counter-terrorism policies? We advance extant literature that focuses on the utility versus identity debate by focusing on individuals' emotional reactions. Drawing on theories of affect, we show that citizens' emotions about immigration are integral to their preferences for EU cooperation on the dual questions of immigration and terrorism. We hypothesise that while anger about immigration is associated with opposition to cooperation on both policies, fear about immigration is associated with support for a common EU counter-terrorism strategy. Using a large-N cross-sectional survey conducted in Germany and the Netherlands, our analyses confirm our hypotheses. Our findings have implications for the progress of European integration and the scope of public approval of EU common policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The financial market crises of 2001/02 and 2007/08 and the sovereign debt crisis that started in 2011 had adverse effects on financialised pensions such as pension funds. In general, moments of crises are major shocks to existing equilibriums and policies and open windows of opportunity for policy change. Did these crises trigger a slowdown or reversal of pension financialisation? This article finds that Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom took similar steps along the pension financialisation path by intensifying the reliance of pension funds on financial markets despite the occurrence of three financial crises. The reinforcement of pension financialisation can be explained by the entrenched interests of several actors in finance, employers, the state, and trade unions, who have no interest in the collapse of pension funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the rise of private defined-contribution pensions traditionally focus on social policy concerns about the allocation of risks and costs for beneficiaries and employers. There is, however, another - low-salience, financial - dimension of pension privatisation. Regulations introducing minimum return guarantees in private pensions impact financial markets because they incentivise fund managers to invest plan portfolios in fixed-income securities rather than in equities. While different segments of the financial industry have divergent preferences over such guarantees, policy-makers are caught in a dilemma: Should they prioritise predictable benefit levels or equity market development? Using the case of the introduction of Germany's 'Riester-Rente', we argue that, as politicians linked the introduction of private defined-contribution plans with cuts in statutory pensions, the re-emergence of a high-salience, social policy image of pensions helped insurance firms' and some trade unionists' case for minimum guarantees to prevail, thereby hindering equity market development in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that not all business politics is ‘quiet politics’ and it explores the conditions of when this is likely to be the case. Drawing on a remarkable lobbying success in the process of reforming banking in Europe, it shows that it was neither capture nor quiet politics within the financial expert community that led to the lobbying success. Business lobbyists from Germany, supported by representatives from other countries, obtained a favourable regulatory treatment of bank lending to small and medium-sized businesses thanks tonoisy business politics. Noisy business politics seeks political influence through pressuring by raising the salience of an issue and expanding the conflict. This strategy is most likely to succeed if the mobilization of opponents can be countervailed through the use of frames that are widely perceived as legitimate and create positive perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The past few years have witnessed the emergence of new actors and ideas in agri-food politics discussed under the heading ‘post-exceptionalism’. Yet our knowledge about which political actors promote a shift from exceptionalism toward post-exceptionalism is limited. How supportive are political parties of post-exceptionalism? Which political parties support a strong form for post-exceptionalism and which a weak one? To examine these research questions, the study concentrates on Germany and the United Kingdom. It shows that the green parties in Germany and the United Kingdom are the strongest advocates of opening up policy-making in the agri-food sector to new actors and of proposing policies that span across the boundaries of this policy sector. Parties that are more closely aligned with farmers’ interests tend to support weaker forms of post-exceptionalism. What also matters for explaining the parties’ positions on post-exceptionalism is how strongly they support state intervention in the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Eurpean Union (EU) environmental policy has increasingly advanced multi-level governance (MLG) to improve policy implementation. MLG approaches mandate (sub-) national planning and introduce functional governance layers to match the biophysical scale of environmental problems. Whereas the literature on policy implementation has focused on thechallengesposed by multi-level systems, the described EU approach relies on MLG as astrategy to better policy implementation. This contribution studies the implementation of EU air quality directives, drawing on all 137 German air quality and action plans, to explore how requirements of multi-level implementation are delivered on the ground. Overall, we find the model of implementing air quality policy through MLG of limited success. In particular, sub-national policy-makers use their new planning competencies but struggle to implement functional governance layers. Mirroring experiences from neighbouring EU policy fields, our findings raise the broader issue of ‘failed’ implementation versus a still untapped potential for adaptation and governance learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution investigates what motivates the use of European Union (EU) law at the street level of migration law implementation. The street level is a crucial venue for EU implementation because lower-level implementers critically influence the level of EU compliance eventually achieved. Employing a bottom–up approach towards implementation, the article combines insights from social psychology and the street-level literature to develop expectations about the relation between individuals’ motivations and their use of EU law. The study investigates through qualitative interviews to what extent German migration administrators use EU law in three multilevel decision contexts. The main findings are that uses of EU law vary across contexts and individual implementers. Particularly when national regulatory frameworks are ambiguous, substantive moral norms and instrumental motivations trigger some implementers to rely on EU law. This reliance even has the potential to correct for problematic transposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the eurozone crisis, observers called upon Germany to assume leadership. Yet, Germany has not emerged as the hoped-for leader. According to the issue at stake, we observe three different outcomes: firstly, Germany refused to lead; secondly, Germany assumed leadership, but failed to deliver; thirdly, Germany acted as a successful leader. This article examines the reasons for this variance by analysing and comparing one case for each outcome: the first financial assistance to Greece; the failed attempt to establish a ‘super-commissioner'; and the shaping of the Fiscal Compact. The analysis includes original data, gathered through interviews in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin. The variance in Germany's behaviour can be explained by employing a rational institutionalist model of leadership. Germany's emergence as a leader depends on the expected costs and benefits of leading. Its impact, in contrast, depends on its power, the distribution of preferences among the actors involved and institutional constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A statutory minimum wage has been introduced in Germany, in the face of business opposition but abetted by union support. The political coalition in favour of minimum wage regulation brought together the centre-left and the centre-right with the argument that regulation is needed to prevent disfunctional interaction between low wages and the social security system. Thus, the dualization which characterizes Germany’s inegalitarian form of co-ordinated capitalism has provoked a corrective political response. The contribution traces the long path to government intervention and assesses why employers were unable, or unwilling, to pre-empt intervention by maintaining the coverage of collective bargaining. It is argued that market liberalization has had a paradoxical effect on employer power: intense domestic as well as international competition has reduced employers’ capacity to act strategically to fend off regulation by the government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The European Union (EU) literature sees increasing market liberalization as a challenge for models of national capitalism. EU liberalization, it is argued, erodes national employment regimes and social protection. However, other scholars highlight the ability of national institutions to reinvent themselves. This contribution assesses these claims by exploring an extreme case of labour market pressure driven by EU liberalization. Focusing on the meat production sector, it shows that low-wage labour migration has affected employment conditions in the meat production sector in Germany and Denmark in different ways: dualization has made Germany a destination country for low-wage work; in contrast, union solidarity in Denmark has kept wages high and Danish meat producers have outsourced work to Germany. The underlying industrial relations systems have shaped actors’ responses to the use of migrant labour. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ideas are at their most powerful as an explanatory variable when they lead agents to go against any broadly reasonable interpretation of their material self-interests. They become even more intriguing when they are instrumental in actuallycausinga crisis, in which actors undercut their own stated goals and then continue to make matters worse by sticking to those same ideas, even in the light of clear evidence that the policies they inspire are not working. This contribution shows two dynamics between power and ideas to explain Germany's behavior during the euro crisis. The first dynamic examines the changing macroeconomic consensus on how to conduct monetary and fiscal policy that governed the euro from 1999 to 2012. The second dynamic shows how a strict adherence to Germany's ordoliberal ideas of budgetary rules and structural reform turned a containable Greek fiscal problem into a full-blown systemic sovereign debt crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recently, it has been argued that the scrutiny of European law proposal by national parliaments contributes to speeding up the implementation of EU law. To test this argument, we study the effect of parliamentary scrutiny on Germany's compliance with all directives adopted between 1999 and 2012. The results are mixed: on the one hand, parliamentary scrutiny successfully transfers necessary deliberations from the implementation stage to the policy-making stage. As a consequence, we observe faster implementation of complex and controversial policies. On the other hand, parliamentary scrutiny carries the risk of triggering conflict and of forcing early commitments by actors who might otherwise have remained passive observers. As a consequence, parliamentary scrutiny may even delay implementation of EU law by waking the proverbial ‘sleeping dogs'. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This contribution analyses the experience of the European Union (EU) with mutual recognition in the single market for goods and the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) as examples of multi-centred governance. In how far is it possible to respond to the functional needs for transborder mobility while protecting the choices of demoi and individual rights? Does the experience in the EU show that recognition of diversity is an alternative to harmonization and unity? The single goods market has developed far-reaching vertical elements falling short of a multi-centred regime. With a duty to recognize all rules, it may become meaningless to determine own rules. The EAW, in contrast, operates as a horizontal system but violates the rights of individuals, while honouring those of demoi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The German federal system is conventionally understood as highly co-ordinated between federal and regional governments and aimed at producing a ‘uniformity’ of living conditions. This view has increasingly been challenged as new work focuses on innovation and diversity at the regional level, and also as a consequence of reforms to the federal system that took place in 2006. This contribution attempts to establish a more systematic basis for assessing and explaining the scope and significance of regional policy variation in Germany. Our findings suggest that – despite institutional structures that foster intense co-ordination between central and regional governments and apparent popular preferences for uniformity of policy outcomes – the extent of policy variation in Germany is much greater than conventionally understood and driven both by structural factors and partisan choices at the regional level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, I argue that the European financial market integration cannot be understood without the European Commission's gradual enforcement of supranational competition law for financial services. The conflict over the liberalization of public banks in Germany demonstrates how the Directorate General for Competition (DG COMP) deepened financial market integration through legal proceedings without the participation of the Council of Ministers. How could DG COMP prevail over the fierce resistance of Germany even though member states never intended for European law to have enough leverage to alter core elements of national financial systems? The article focuses on DG COMP's capacities for strategic action. DG COMP was able to enforce European competition rules for financial services, skilfully combining its legal competences with political strategies. The case illustrates that the regulatory integration of financial services in the EU is much more driven by supranational institutions than assumed by the bulk of the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last three decades, the German political economy can be characterized by both institutional continuity and change. Understanding the dynamics of institutional change therefore requires an examination of the interplay of changes in formal institutional rules and how organizations respond to these changes by strategic attempts to promote or hinder further change in institutions. The macro-level political story of institutional change shows a number of paradoxes resulting in unexpected and often incomplete forms of market liberalization shaped by continued support for some core features of Germany's social market economy. The resulting erosion of Germany's co-ordinated model of economic organization through networks and business associations has gone hand-in-hand with the attempts to preserve these institutions for core workers and sectors of the economy in the face of changing environments. The result is a more varied institutional landscape characterized by international diffusion of liberal policies and the politics of their variable re-embedding within a long-term path of institutional continuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Services Directive is one of the most significant and controversial legislative proposals ever negotiated in the European Union (EU). This article fills a gap in our knowledge by addressing the key questions as to why and how this prestigious proposal was watered down during the negotiation process. By applying the framework of rational choice institutionalism, the analysis pinpoints the positions of the key players and estimates their relative importance in shaping the final outcome. Prima facie, the European Parliament seemed to be the decisive actor developing the text which was adopted in the end. However, a closer inspection reveals that the text was influenced by the newly elected conservative–socialist coalition government in Germany and reflected a relatively low common denominator which secured acceptance from not only the vast majority of Members of the European Parliament, but also avoided any explicit opposition in the adoption by the Council of Ministers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on economic patriotism has so far focused on public policy and only marginally addressed the role of non-state actors. This contribution seeks to fill this gap. It examines the emergence of a European economic patriotism discourse among trade union representatives at General Motors since the late 1990s, which underpinned the operation of the company's ‘European works council’, a statutory body of employee representation mandated by a 1994 European Union directive. It argues that the new trade union emphasis on ‘European interests’ vis-à-vis subsidiaries in other world regions, and vis-à-vis GM's global headquarter in Detroit, reflected a (partial) ‘upward shift’ of patriotism from the national to the European level in response to corporate globalization. It also highlights the limited and fragile nature of European patriotism, which was severely challenged during the recent global economic crisis [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

European Union (EU) patient mobility law creates destabilization rights: rights for citizens that would, if consistently applied, destabilize law, administration and finance for healthcare systems across the EU. This article focuses on the responses of the destabilized organizations and their efforts to restabilize their legal situation. We argue that it takes place through two decisions: a decision about whether or not to change procedures in response to the new right; and a decision about whether or not to lobby to circumscribe the new right. Our qualitative research in Germany and the UK found some differences in responses, but across the board the incumbent organizations and governments opted for very limited compliance and considerable engagement in EU politics as their preferred strategy for responding to the new destabilization rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the freedom of service provision is one of the pillars of the Single Market Project, such deregulation clashes with national wage regulation and social policy-making. This article examines recent attempts by the European Commission to further promote liberalization, epitomized in the so-called 'Bolkestein Directive', as well as three case studies of political conflict involving the transnational posting of workers within the framework of service liberalization in Ireland, Sweden and Germany. Re-regulation of service provision by governments is crucially affected by the lobbying efforts of trade unions and employers. Internal organizational characteristics of labour market interest associations are crucial in predicting their effectiveness. The deregulatory effects are felt most severely in Germany, while even in Sweden the former gentlemen's agreement can no longer be sustained without serious modification. In France, no conflict unfolded. In Ireland, a business-friendly comprise emerges, whilst the European Union directive was severely watered down, though not neutered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Centre-right parties have by and large been keen to mobilize support by adopting relatively restrictive approaches on immigration and multiculturalism. However, such mobilizing strategies carry a number of costs: centre-right parties risk losing support from more moderate supporters, and they may lose legitimacy by pursuing policies that conflict with more liberal approaches, or which prove difficult to deliver. This contribution develops a typology of these risks and applies it to analyse the behaviour of the CDU in Germany. While many features of the CDU are well suited to more restrictionist immigration policies, such approaches have at times conflicted with the more Christian and communitarian ethos on which the party was originally founded. Moreover, when in government the CDU has found it difficult to deliver on more restrictive pledges, and is likely to find it increasingly difficult to reconcile restrictiveness with a business-friendly approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Often, states incrementally adapt to demands stemming from the European Union. Yet, most of the prominent Europeanization approaches focus exclusively on immediate responses of states and are also static. If they theorize supranational actors as agents of top-down Europeanization at all, they do not specify scope conditions for their success. This article complements existing approaches in studying instances in which states do not meet European demands immediately (non-compliance). It analyses the role of the European Court of Justice in facilitating changes even against states' eminent resistance to top-down Europeanization. An empirical analysis shows that judgments and threats of sanctions are important for restoring compliance but are not always effective. This article theoretically accounts for this finding. Judgments create publicity and empower societal compliance proponents. This facilitates successful shaming or reframing strategies leading to catching up with Europeanization, if contested norms fit to institutionalized norms or if old policy frames are degenerating. Financial penalties are only effective if domestic societal resistance is weak and if the shadow of sanctions is intense. The hypotheses are illustrated with two environmental and social policy case studies in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This papa seeks to develop a new understanding of the implementation of EU policies as a mixed process of both Europeanization and domestication. While some scholars equate the implementation of EU policies with Europeanization, this fails to capture the dominance of national factors and the relative impact of EU policies. The implementation of EU policies is best conceptualized as a blend of effective EU influence over domestic policy choices in a given policy area - defined as Europeanization - and of domestic choices of non-prescribed or non-recommended policy options in the same policy area - which is termed domestication. Domestication and Europeanization usually work as complementary forces. These concepts are employed for art analysis of the implementation of the 1990 EU Directive on Access to Environmental information in Ireland, Britain and Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the creation of the Stability and Growth Pact. It examines the economic and political factors behind it, including the role of economic ideas, experts, politicians, institutional arrangements in the Maastricht Treaty, domestic politics, and the exceptional position of Germany in the realm of monetary integration. It concludes that a set of commonly held beliefs together with a corresponding power-political constellation explain the creation of the SGP. As these parameters change, they inform our understanding of the current crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We miss the significance of the advent of the Euro for European political, economic, and social order if we ignore its identity dimension. Money has always been a symbolic marker in nation-building efforts and is strongly related to collective national identities. This article makes two interrelated causal claims. On the one hand, the introduction of Euro bills and coins has already begun to affect Euroland citizens' identification with the EU and Europe in general. The Euro makes Europe real and reifies it as a political order, since it provides a visible link from Brussels to the daily lives of the citizens. On the other hand, existing collective identities pertaining to the nation-state explain to a large degree how comfortable people feel using and dealing with the Euro. The variation in attitudes between the Italian enthusiasm for the Euro, the German ambivalence about it, and the widespread British opposition can be accounted for by the differences in collective understandings and identification patterns with the nation-state and Europe. In sum, the causal arrows from the Euro to collective identities run both ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]