The Federal Republic of Germany is a country in which major policy changes have been rare or untypical. It is a long process that policy changes can be planned and implemented. The main reason is the institutional restrictions in Germany’s polity. There are structural constraints on the majority in the legislature and the executive mainly as a reaction to the Weimar Republic. Also, a large number of collective actors and institutions participate in the political process and in policy making in Germany. Among these, the federation (Bund) with the federal government and the political parties on the top, the sixteen semi-autonomous states (Länder), the Bundesrat , the council of representatives of the sixteen state governments, a wide variety of cooperative institutions between the federation and the states, such as planning committees for the joint tasks of the federal government and the state executives, and numerous horizontal networks between the states deserve to be named first.
As Schmidt points out:
“A wide variety of co-governing forces and veto players can result in time-consuming processes of consensus formation and conflict resolution. The multitude of co-governing forces, such as coalition parties in federal government, the powerful state governments, the autonomous central bank, a powerful constitutional court and self-administration bodies in local government, social insurance and higher education, may even generate a highly fragmented and slowly working decision-making process. In the worst case a blockade of the decision-making process cannot be precluded.”1
It can be also claimed, that a consensus requirement in the political structure of Germany gives way to reducement of short term elasticity of the political institutions2.This means that the change of the government from SPD to CDU will not produce major policy changes in the short term and there is to be expected continuity in many political issues.
In this text first I will argue Germany’s political system which leads to “policy immobilization” or “Reformstau”3 under the headings of veto players and Germanys federalism, and than the government under Angela Merkel and its continuity in many political areas until now. Under the light of historical and institutional proofs of continuity It will be argued that Merkel’s politics will not differ much from Schröder’s political approaches in the short term in the areas where policy changes are required.
PART 1- POLITICAL SYSTEM- Reasons of Continuity
Veto Players
How important are the power resources of the federal government in Germany? The answer to this question differs. One school of thought sees an impressive accumulation of political power in the federal government, above all in those political parties which control the government. Others regard the power resources of the federal executive in Germany as moderate at the most. Proponents of this view emphasize the fragmentation of power resulting from federalism. Support for this view comes also from scholars who regard politics in the Federal Republic of Germany as subordinate to the judiciary. Proponents of a fourth view emphasize the economic constraints on policy makers, most notably the momentum of a market economy and the impact of globalization , and point to the limits of national policy solutions imposed by a transnational organisation, such as the European Union. Others argue that one needs to balance the power resources of the federal government against the resources of the many ‘co-governing actors’ and ‘veto players’ in Germany’s polity. In this view , the German federal government is at best ‘semi-sovereign’. Historical and international comparisons indeed reveal a ‘semi sovereign state’4.
In that state the government’s room for manoeuvre has been narrowly circumscribed. Cross-national comparison also shows that the Federal Republic is a state full of co-governors and veto players.5 Compared with other constitutional democracies , an usually large number of veto players and co-governing institutions constrain the steering capacity of the federal government in Germany6. According to Schmidt these constraints include:
1. a parliamentary government as opposed to a presidential system and, hence, a higher vulnerability of the government to parliamentary veto players;
2. coalition government as the most typical form as opposed to a single-party government and, hence, higher costs in consensus formation;
3. high thresholds for changes of the constitution which provide ‘veto points’20 to the opposition party and the upper house( as opposed to a system of government without opposition);
4. extended judicial review including abstract review of the constitutionality of legislative acts (rather than a politicized pattern);
5. advanced minority protection mainly through the constitutionally guaranteed basic rights (in contrast to unconstrained majority rule);
6. delegation of public functions to expert institutions , such as an autonomous Central Bank and institutions for safeguarding a free and competitive market;
7. delegation of public functions to interest associations and self-administrating communities, such as social insurance and autonomous collective bargaining between employers’ and employees’ associations on wages and working conditions;
8. power sharing between the federal government and the state governments;
9. self-administration at the local level and in higher education, such as in the university system;
10. constraints due to the transfer of sovereignity to international organizations, such as NATO and the World Trade Organization , as well as transnational organizations, for example the EU;
11. frequently divergent majorities in the lower and the upper house, largely due to non-synchronized trends in party support in lower house elections and in the parliamentary election in the states;
12. and last but not least the quasi-permanent electoral campaign in Germany which results from the high frequency of national elections and state-level elections of national importance.
The implication of the large number of potentially co-governing actors and veto players in Germany is twofold. First, it strengthens the hybrid character of the Federal Republic which fuses majoritarian and non-majoritarian elements. The non-majoritarian component resides
The Federal Republic of Germany is a country in which major policy changes have been rare or untypical. It is a long process that policy changes can be planned and implemented. The main reason is the institutional restrictions in Germany’s polity. There are structural constraints on the majority in the legislature and the executive mainly as a reaction to the Weimar Republic. Also, a large number of collective actors and institutions participate in the political process and in policy making in Germany. Among these, the federation (Bund) with the federal government and the political parties on the top, the sixteen semi-autonomous states (Länder), the Bundesrat , the council of representatives of the sixteen state governments, a wide variety of cooperative institutions between the federation and the states, such as planning committees for the joint tasks of the federal government and the state executives, and numerous horizontal networks between the states deserve to be named first.