Julia Fleischer

Power resources of parliamentary executives : policy advice in the UK and Germany

This article compares the institutionalisation of policy advice inside offices which service chief executives in the UK and Germany. It focuses on the institutionalisation of ‘policy units’ during the early 1970s and late 1990s which reveals different patterns. Whereas British policy units are allowed to interfere in any departmental business and address a variety of issues, German policy units are narrowed to provide administrative support and avoid partisan issues. Applying a new institutionalist perspective and the veto approach, this article argues that institutionalisation processes as strategic interactions of organisational actors are affected by institutional features at the macro-level of parliamentary systems. These features include principles of cabinet decision-making and the electoral system with its effects on parliament and cabinet composition which both set veto positions in the executive and legislative decision arena. Next to these institutional features, the empirical evidence shows how organisational legacies account for the influential role of British policy units as power resource for the PM and the nearly irrelevance of German policy units as power resource for the Chancellor.

Drawing from the bargaining pool: determinants of ministerial selection in Germany

This article expands our current knowledge about ministerial selection in coalition governments and analyses why ministerial candidates succeed in acquiring a cabinet position after general elections. It argues that political parties bargain over potential office-holders during government-formation processes, selecting future cabinet ministers from an emerging ‘bargaining pool’. The article draws upon a new dataset comprising all ministrable candidates discussed by political parties during eight government-formation processes in Germany between 1983 and 2009. The conditional logit regression analysis reveals that temporal dynamics, such as the day she enters the pool, have a significant effect on her success in achieving a cabinet position. Other determinants of ministerial selection discussed in the existing literature, such as party and parliamentary expertise, are less relevant for achieving ministerial office. The article concludes that scholarship on ministerial selection requires a stronger emphasis for its endogenous nature in government-formation as well as the relevance of temporal dynamics in such processes.

Time and Crisis

This article presents a theoretical argument that the study of time provides crucial explanatory perspectives to the analysis of governmental crisis responses. The article claims that time is an external condition and an internalized feature of organizational behaviour. It follows that time influences governmental crisis responses but can also be exploited by actors during such critical episodes. The article discusses the properties of time and its consequences during crises along these two notions, reviewing existing scholarly work on time and crises. It concludes with a plea for a more explicit and systematic time-centred study of governmental crisis responses.

Sectoral Dynamics in Executive Politics: Co-Ordinating Climate Policy in Germany

Climate change has emerged on governmental agendas throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, especially following the signing of the Kyoto Protocol (the Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCC) in 1997. The intricacies of the issue, political disputes about scientific evidence, the requirement to deal with an inter-generational policy problem and the need for international problem-solving devices make climate change a ‘wicked issue’. In addition, climate change as a policy issue conflicts with other governmental priorities, such as dealing with social redistribution and economic development. Such a context makes international co-ordination particularly difficult, as evidenced during the Climate Change Conference COP-15 in December 2009 in Copenhagen (Pralle 2009).

Das Primat der Richtlinienkompetenz im politischen Prozess

Die Richtlinienkompetenz eines deutschen Bundeskanzlers ist regelmasig Gegenstand publizistischer wie akademischer Debatten. Wahrend in der medialen Berichterstattung haufig auf einzelne Regierungsentscheidungen verwiesen wird, fur die der Regierungschef die Zustimmung seiner Kabinettskollegen in besonderer Weise eingefordert hat (z. B. Die Zeit 1987, Der Spiegel 2000), wurde in der wissenschaftlichen Auseinandersetzung zunachst um eine verfassungsrechtliche Bewertung dieses „Strukturprinzips“ des deutschen Regierungssystems gerungen (z. B. Bockenforde 1964, Hennis 1964, Juncker 1965, Brauswetter 1976). Seit geraumer Zeit wird das Phanomen auch aus politikwissenschaftlicher Perspektive diskutiert. Hier wird argumentiert, dass Kanzler-, Kabinetts- und Ressortprinzip zwar zur wechselseitigen Ausbalancierung angelegt sind (Art. 65 GG), in der Praxis allerdings das Ressortprinzip gegenuber den anderen beiden Prinzipien dominiert (Mayntz 1987: 4, Hesse/Ellwein 1997: 312f).

Die europÄischen Agenturen als Diener vieler Herren? Zur Steuerung und Rolle von EU-Agenturen

Im Zuge der „fieberartigen Ausbreitung“ verselbstAndigter Verwaltungseinheiten in vielen Mitgliedstaaten der EuropAischen Union (EU) (vgl. Pollitt et al. 2001) rucken die auf europAischer Ebene etablierten Agenturen zunehmend in den Mittelpunkt politischer Auseinandersetzungen und wissenschaftlicher Debatten. Der Diskussionsgegenstand „europAische Agentur“ ist dabei ebenso wenig eindeutig und abschlie\end definiert wie Agenturen auf nationaler Ebene.1 Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden jene Einrichtungen betrachtet, die unter der ersten SAule der europAischen Gemeinschaft etabliert werden2 und die EuropAische Kommission wie folgt beschreibt: „Eine Gemeinschaftsagentur ist eine nicht mit den Gemeinschaftsinstitutionen (Rat, Parlament, Kommission usw.) zusammenhAngende Einrichtung des europAischen offentlichen Rechts mit eigener Rechtspersonlichkeit. Ihre Schaffung erfolgt durch einen Rechtsakt des abgeleiteten Gemeinschaftsrechts, in dem die technischen, wissenschaftlichen und administrativen Aufgaben der Agentur geregelt sind“ (EU-Kommission 2004: 3).3 Dieser Definition entsprechen derzeit sechzehn Einrichtungen, die nach ihren Grundungsjahren unterschieden werden in Agenturen der ersten Generation (Etablierung in den 1970er Jahren), Agenturen der zweiten Generation (Etablierung wAhrend der 1990er Jahre) sowie Agenturen der dritten Generation (Etablierung in den letzten Jahren) (Vos 2003; Flinders 2004; Geradin/ Petit 2004).

Comparative Political Leadership

tition have a greater effect on intra-party power relations than the country in which the party rules. Restructuring and party financing have equally ambiguous territorial effects: the centralisation of power that accrues from professionalisation, mediatisation and the allocation of funding is partly offset by the anchoring of parties at the regional level of government and the opportunities this offers for bureaucratic control and patronage. The specific situations under which one level bears influence over the other remain to be uncovered. Detterbeck’s intuition to marry these two hitherto unconnected strands of literature thus promises to bear interesting fruit in the future. In this respect, his book deserves credit for presenting the ideas, amassing the data and advancing the arguments, all of which will inspire and guide future research dealing with territory, parties and political conflict in the multi-level systems of Europe.