Patricia Hogwood

Devolution, change and European union policy‐making in the UK

Burch M., Gomez R., Hogwood P. and Scott A. (2005) Devolution, change and European Union policy‐making in the UK, Regional Studies 39 , 465–475. This paper explores the extent to which European Union policy‐making in the UK has changed as a result of devolution. The paper draws on material concerning economic development and the structural funds, agriculture and rural development, and environmental policy. The extent to which there has been a change in the outcomes (content and impact) of policy is examined. Evidence from Scotland, Wales, the English regions and UK central government reveals that it is not yet possible to judge the magnitude of changes in policy outcomes in any comprehensive and definitive way. Consequently, the paper concentrates on changes in the way European Union‐related policies have been handled post‐devolution. An argument emphasizing continuity with pre‐devolution is examined and found wanting. Changes in the handling of policy are evaluated in relation to notions of political ‘potential’ and ‘opportunity space’. Consideration is given to changes in key participants, policy‐handling networks, and the values and understandings underpinning policy‐making. It is clear that in comparison with the English regions and regions in many other Member States, Wales and Scotland enjoy a privileged if dependent position in national European policy‐making. They have applied new resources in a more focused way and have pursued a more territorial take on Europe, while still remaining insider participants in UK/European Union policy‐making. The conclusion is drawn that in the emerging system of UK multilevel governance, the magnitude of change in the handling of European policy varies across territory and policy, but is especially significant in relation to Wales and Scotland. Moreover, these changes are beginning and will continue to impact on outcomes.

Selective Memory: Channelling the Past in Post-GDR Society

Collective memory, comprising the ways in which the past is perceived, shared, and constructed through daily interactions, ceremonial, or negative manifestations such as taboo, has become a focus for scholarship that crosses disciplinary boundaries within the humanities and social sciences. This chapter points to some potential new avenues for memory research using insights from different disciplines. Specifically, it draws on political science approaches, together with those from cognate social science disciplines, to examine ways in which current memory research on the GDR might usefully be supplemented. Adopting an alternative perspective on some of the common assumptions and themes in GDR memory research helps us to reassess the analytical priorities of the field and to explore alternative research methodologies and agendas. It is well beyond the scope of this chapter to present a comprehensive catalogue of political science approaches to the challenge of remembering the GDR; themes have therefore been selected to highlight different ways in which a political science perspective may inform contemporary debates in GDR memory research. These include the temporal perspective of political science; the significance of memory for society; the construction of memory collectives; the contextualisa-tion of memory in identity formation; and constructions of victimhood.

German Healthcare in Transition: Global Pressures, Governance and Public Wellbeing

This chapter employs a historical analysis to argue that the erosion of social equity principles undergirding Germany’s corporatist system of health care administration constitutes a paradigm shift in the provision of services. The author notes that Germany’s welfare system has faced a slew of internal and external pressures over the past few decades, including fiscal duress, the impacts of globalization, demographic crises, and the near-collapse of the Eurozone. As a result, political actors have increasingly moved government away from the direct provision of services and toward a regulatory state in which care is contracted out, leading to a diminution of broad democratic accountability in favour of managerial responsibility within individual health institutions. The challenge in enacting such change has lied in introducing financial sustainability without sacrificing social equity, a value that remains of paramount importance to the German public. Unfortunately, such compromise has most often taken the form of comforting discourse rather than substantive efforts to ensure that health services continue to promote social justice. As polarization in health increases alongside growing divides across other sectors, the notion of equal opportunity in Germany is gradually being exposed as a myth: despite the assurances of politicians, managerial accountability is merely a procedural guarantee that carries no redistributive imperative, and thus entails a radical and potentially undesirable reorganization of the relationship between the state and its citizens. In the coming years, the German public will need to decide whether this is a transformation that is in line with its social and moral values.

The Politics of Social Cohesion in Germany, France and the United Kingdom

acceptance of a gender quorum and Williarty explores the impact of the quorum on levels of female representation within the party. She shows that the quorum can be viewed as a partial success due to a modest increase in female CDU parliamentarians in the Bundestag, an uneven effect across the state-level parliaments and a more pronounced rise in female representation in internal offices. The chapters which focus on the CDU’s ideological identity underline its capacity to adapt, albeit in a moderate and piecemeal fashion, to the far-reaching social changes clearly outlined in Green’s chapter. The party has since 1990 moved away from longheld positions on family and immigration policy and has cycled through different responses to the growing pressure on the German welfare state. The CDU’s ideological plasticity is also evident in Debus and Müller’s chapter which demonstrates both the markedly diverse social and economic positions adopted by state-level CDU parties and how these reflect important regional differences. Programmatic adjustments since unification have often caused intra-party unrest and may lead ultimately to the dilution of the party’s Christian Democratic identity, as Clemens argues, but it seems likely that these changes are part of the explanation for the CDU’s resilience thus far. Altogether, the book provides a number of important insights into this durability and for this reason should be of interest not just to German politics scholars but anyone interested in the fate of political parties in advanced industrial democracies.

Social wellbeing and democracy

This chapter investigates the economic and cultural foundations of wellbeing in the Berlin Republic and assesses the role of objective and subjective wellbeing in social and political life. It finds that although Germany enjoys the economic prerequisites for generally high levels of individual and social wellbeing, certain individuals and groups of Germans struggle to realise their life potential, either because of material constraints or because of subjective constraints relating to social tensions and cultural perceptions. 1 These constraints include a deep-seated ‘materialist-pessimist’ cultural outlook; ongoing tensions relating to the unification of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1990; and a new public discourse of austerity arising out of government responses to an overloaded welfare system and the European financial crisis.

‘How Happy are You …?’ Subjective Well-Being in East Germany Twenty Years after Unification:

Since the unification of Germany in 1990, East Germans have largely approximated the characteristics of the ‘happiness profile’ — but not the overall levels of happiness – of West Germans. Current patterns of subjective well-being among East Germans raise concerns about the contingency of identification with the democratic system of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG); the further entrenchment of financial jealousies between East and West Germany; and the development of a ‘happiness gap’ between the richest and poorest in East German society. A ‘materialist pessimist’ outlook in both West and East Germany may best be explained by cultural factors.