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Did electoral competition shape the policies of the fourth Merkel government? We answer this question in five steps. First, we theoretically discuss under which conditions electoral competition affects public policies. Only in publicly salient issue areas in which opposition parties advocate credible alternatives and only if policy satisfaction influences voting intention will the government modify its policies. Next, we identify the two most salient issue areas, climate change and the Corona pandemic. Third, opposition parties offered credible alternatives, the Greens (and the Left) in climate policy and the FDP (and the AfD) regarding Corona management. Fourth, governing parties could not be certain to participate in the next government. Furthermore, voting intention for the Christian democrats as leading party of the government was related to policy success, while the Greens (and the Left) and the FDP (and the AfD) could benefit from dissatisfaction with climate change policy and Corona management, respectively. Finally, only regarding climate change did the government respond to electoral pressure by an increase in press releases, while communication about Corona was driven by voters' problem perception. These findings are corroborated by brief case studies of policy-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special issue first describes the cumbersome process of forming the fourth and final Merkel government. Both coalition partners experienced severe electoral losses in 2017 and were not particularly close to one another programmatically. This made the formation of a new coalition difficult. Next, the to-do-list is discussed. It turns out that, as a response to the Fridays-for-Future protests, voters considered climate change to be the most important problem in 2019, while the Corona pandemic dominated the agenda from early 2020. Interestingly, none of the coalition parties 'owned' either of these issues and this could have made policy-making even more intricate. In the third part, we summarise the policy profile of the fourth Merkel government, based mostly on the contributions to this special issue. It turns out that the policies of the fourth Merkel government mirrored those of its predecessor. In the socio-economic dimension a gentle de-liberalisation continued, while the policies on the social dimension followed a moderately liberal path. In the final section, the plan of the special issue is outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses German politics, the third coalition formed by the cabinet of Angela Merkel of the political parties Social Democrats (SPD) and Christian Democrats (CDU and CSU). It also discusses the macroeconomic situation, growing economy, and declination of unemployment and soaring employment.

Negativity bias suggests that the attribution of blame to governments, for alleged or actual policy failures, is disproportionately pertinent for their popularity. However, when citizens attribute blame for adverse consequences of a policy, does it make a difference which policy was it, and who was the political agent that adopted the policy? We posit that the level of blame citizens attribute to political agents for policy failures depends on three policy-oriented considerations: (1) the distance between a citizen's ideal policy and the agent's established policy position; (2) the distance between a citizen's ideal policy and the agent's concrete policy choice; and (3) the distance between the agent's established policy position and her concrete policy choice. The inherent relationship between these three policy-oriented considerations renders their integration in one model a theoretical and methodological imperative. The model provides novel observable predictions regarding the conditions under which each of the three policy-oriented factors will produce either pronounced or subtle observable effects on blame attribution. We test the model's predictions in two survey experiments, in Israel and in Germany. The results of both experiments are highly consistent with the model's predictions. These finding offer an important contribution by specifying the ways in which individual-level preferences interact with politicians' policy reputations and policy choices to shape blame attribution. Our model entails unintuitive revisions to several strands of the literature, and in the "Discussion" section we provide tentative support for the applicability of this model to other political judgments beyond blame attribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies a modified Multiple-Streams Approach (MSA) to the German Hartz IV labor market reform, probably the most far-reaching policy project since unification, which many theoretical approaches have substantial difficulties explaining. Empirically, the article provides the first encompassing explanation of the Hartz IV reform by putting together the empirical pieces of the overall puzzle. Theoretically, the article demonstrates that the extension of the MSA by Herweg, Huß, and Zohlnhöfer (HHZ) is fruitful regarding the adaptation of the MSA for decision making and regarding their hypotheses and operational definitions which allow a rigorous empirical analysis and provide the possibility to prove the MSA wrong. In contrast, HHZ's adaptation to parliamentary systems turn out to be less suitable for the case. Moreover, the point at which the political stream is considered to be ready for coupling needs reconsideration. It is argued that it suffices that some key political actors become interested in a proposal; in contrast, the necessary majorities for an adoption of the proposal need not be forthcoming already because these can still be organized during decision-coupling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding party competition as a ‘political market’, we explore its characteristics during the second Merkel government, 2009–13. On the demand side, analysing opinion polls and the Länder election results, we find that the outcome of the next Bundestag election was uncertain. Thus, electoral competition was likely to be intense. On the supply side, opposition parties presented credible alternatives to government policies with regard to social as well as environmental policy. Regarding the Euro crisis, however, a consensus across the established parties existed. Studying three of the most salient policy issues, we identify party competition as a crucial determinant of decision-making. While the debate on minimum wages was substantially shaped by party competition, resulting in ‘anticipatory obedience’, nuclear energy only became affected by electoral considerations after the ‘Fukushima shock’ which resulted in a major policy shift. Regarding the response to the Euro crisis, however, party competition was essentially suspended. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The German grand coalition's track record with regard to managing the financial crisis is mixed. The government has spent enormous amounts of money to prevent a breakdown of the banking system and to cushion the effects of the recession. It was at least partially successful as these programmes indeed prevented collapses of banks as well as bank runs, kept unemployment relatively low and somewhat mitigated the recession. Nonetheless, at least some of the crisis policies lacked coherence, particularly with regard to the bank rescue packages. The reason is that even in the face of a systemic banking crisis and a GDP decline of 5 per cent, programmatic differences between the coalition partners have not disappeared and became manifest in government policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 2009 German federal election took place during the deepest recession in German post-war history. It brought to power a coalition of Christian democrats and liberals while the social democrats suffered by far their worst result at a general election since 1949. This paper discusses whether there is a causal relationship between the government's response to the crisis and the election result. While voters basically supported the government's management of the banking crisis they were much more sceptical with regard to the grand coalition's management of the recession. Interestingly, a majority of the voters disapproved of some of the interventionist policies the SPD had suggested and believed that the Christian democrats were the most competent crisis managers. Therefore, the economic crisis may well have helped the bourgeois parties win the election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Was there a turnaround in economic policy after the change of government in Germany in 1998? And to what extent was it adopted or why did adoption fail? These are the questions this article addresses. Analysing fiscal policy and employment policy between 1998 and 2003, it is impossible to detect a stringent policy concept which the government tried to implement. What is more, there exist significant policy discontinuities over time. This is explained by intra-party conflicts within the Social Democratic Party and by the effects of party competition while the institutional obstacles turned out to be of minor importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]