Stephen Padgett

The politics of economic reform in Germany: global, Rhineland or hybrid capitalism

This new volume situates current debates about economic reform in Germany in illuminating historical and structural contexts. Showing how economic reform has become the central issue on the German political agenda, raising contentious issues of policy management and posing deeper questions about political beliefs and identities. It also examines the politics of the reform process, outlining competing views about the root causes of Germany’s economic problems, the appropriate policy responses, and the distribution of costs. It situates the reform process in the wider context of the decline of the German economic model (Modell Deutschland) and Germany’s transition from European ‘pace-setter’ to economic ‘laggard’. Particular attention is paid to the following key questions: * What continuities and discontinuities can be seen in Germanys political economy? * Are globalization and Europeanization associated with a progressive neo-liberal ascendancy in economic reform? * How does economic reform in Germany compare with that in other states, notably Britain and France? * Are there distinctive patterns in the way domestic policymakers negotiate economic reform? * How do the characteristics of the German labour market and welfare state condition economic reform? * How much variation exists at the Laender levels? This book was previously published as a special issue of German Politics.

Welfare bias in the party system: a neo-downsian explanation for gridlock in economic reform

Employing neo-Downsian theory, the article seeks a party system explanation for the difficulties experienced by political actors in seeking to reform the declining German economy. Taking the UK as a comparator, it investigates the linkages between voter preferences, party positions and government programmes in relation to the market economy and welfare. Whilst the main German parties have recently leapfrogged their UK counterparts in the emphasis placed on the market economy, there is still a ‘welfare bias’ that inhibits them from adopting sharply defined market positions. Welfare bias is attributed to voter preferences, and, in particular, to the diffuse distribution of voter preferences across the party system.

Organizing democracy: Economic interest groups in post‐communist Germany

Three analytical perspectives derived from group theory reveal emergent patterns of interest group activity in post‐communist society. Pluralist and corporatist theories locate the socio‐economic foundations of group interests in employment relations and the structure of capital ownership. Characterized by fragmentation and individualization, post‐communist society provides a weak social infrastructure for collective action. Lacking the organizational assets which sustain collective action in resource mobilization theory, interest groups are over‐reliant on service provision as a membership incentive. Organizational activity thus conforms to the ‘entrepreneurial model’ postulated by exchange theory. These tendencies are evident in the forms of group activity found in the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, but are particularly pronounced in the post‐communist economy of eastern Germany.

Superwahljahr in the New Länder: Polarisation in an open political market

Four years after unification, the 1994 elections in the new Lander show the institutional weakness of the parties, an electorate relatively unstructured by group based partisanship, and a party system characterised by potentially unstable structures of party competition. Whilst party membership has stabilised, there is little indication that the post‐unification decline can be reversed. Although group partisanship ‘normalised’ somewhat in 1994 it remains weaker than in the west, with a correspondingly higher incidence of ‘situational’ voting and more electoral volatility. Tendencies towards concentration and polarisation mean that the party system is less predictable than previously, with a more open political market in which the capacity of the parties to control politics is significantly reduced.

Introduction: Beyond the Politics of Centrality?

This volume is in recognition and appreciation of a political scientist whose work over 30 years has provided some of the key concepts with which we interpret German politics. To have compiled the volume without an underlying purpose, however, would be alien to the man we seek to celebrate. Accordingly, we have set out to employ the intellectual legacy of Gordon Smith in an evaluation of contemporary German politics and government. The legacy can be encapsulated in the concept of ‘the politics of centrality’ in which a centre-oriented party system provides the foundation for a model of party governance geared to a pragmatic search for consensual solutions. In this volume we evaluate the sustainability of the politics of centrality in the face of countervailing tendencies towards bipolarity in the post-Kohl party system. Second, we examine changes taking place in the German model of consensus governance as it confronts the challenges of globalisation, asking whether consensual governance is still – as it has been for Gordon Smith – the ‘efficient secret’ of German politics. Finally – and this is an important issue for someone who has lived a professional and personal life between the United Kingdom and Germany – we assess the potential for reciprocal policy learning between the two countries as the German model adapts to the new international environment. At the general level, Gordon Smith’s legacy lies in the distinctive approach that he brings to bear on the study of German politics. The approach is composed of three elements. First there is the attempt to ‘get inside’ the politics and political culture of the country. This began with a national service posting to a war-ravaged Hamburg in 1945, where he began to rethink his wartime prejudices about the country and its people. Thereafter, understanding Germany became ‘a continuing quest’, sustained by dinner table seminars with his first wife – a Berlinerin with a deep love of German history and culture. A second vital element in his approach is the perspective of comparative politics, which, as Hayward shows in this volume, is essential to an understanding of a nation’s politics. The final ingredient in Gordon Smith’s perspective on politics reflects his early interest in sociology. His linkage between culture and institutions prefigures