Germany: beyond the stable state

270 Pages·2004·2.462 MB·English

by  Herbert Kitschelt Wolfgang Streeck

GERMANY: BEYOND THE STABLE STATE
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GERMANY
Beyond the Stable State
Editors
HERBERT KITSCHELT
WOLFGANG STREECK
FRANK CASS
LONDON • PORTLAND, OR
First published in 2004 in Great Britain by
FRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITED
Crown House, 47 Chase Side, Southgate,
London N14 BP, England
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Copyright © 2004 Frank Cass & Co. Ltd
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Germany: beyond the stable state
1. Capitalism—Germany 2. Industrial relations—Germany
3. Germany—Economic conditions—1990–4. Germany—Social
conditions—1990–5. Germany—Politics and government—
1990–
I. Kitschelt, Herbert II. Streeck, Wolfgang
330.9′43
ISBN Master e-book ISBN
ISBN (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0 7146 5588 0 (hb)
ISBN 0 7146 8473 2 (pb)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Germany: beyond the stable state/editors Herbert Kitschelt,
Wolfgang Streeck.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7146-5588-0 (hb)—ISBN 0-7146-8473-2 (pb)
1. Germany—Politics and governments—1990–. 2. Germany
—Economic conditions—1990–. 3. European Union—Germany
I. Kitschelt, Herbert.
II. Streeck, Wolfgang, 1946– III. Title.
JN3971.A91G4635 2003
320.943–dc22 2003015389
v
This group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue of
West European Politics (ISSN 0140–2382), Vol. 26, No. 4 (October 2003),
[Germany: Beyond the Stable State].
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of Frank Cass
and Company Limited.
Contents
From Stability to Stagnation: Germany at the 1
Beginning of the Twenty-First Century
Herbert Kitschelt and Wolfgang Streeck
PART I: NATIONAL UNIFICATION AND EUROPEAN
INTEGRATION
German Unification and ‘Model Germany’: An 34
Adventure in Institutional Conservatism
Helmut Wiesenthal
Germany and European Integration: A Shifting of 55
Tectonic Plates
Charlie Jeffery and William E.Paterson
PART II: LABOUR MARKETS, LIFE STYLES AND POLITICAL
PREFERENCES
New Ways of Life or Old Rigidities? Changes in 73
Social Structure and Life Courses and their Political
Impact
Karl Ulrich Mayer and Steffen Hillmert
The Crumbling Pillars of Social Partnership 95
Wolfgang Streeck and Anke Hassel
Political-Economic Context and Partisan Strategies 118
in the German Federal Elections, 1990–2002
Herbert Kitschelt
The Changing Role of Political Protest Movements 145
Dieter Rucht
PART III: REORGANISATION OF STATE AND POLITICAL
ECONOMY
Corporate Governance and the Disintegration of 169
Organised Capitalism in the 1990s
Jürgen Beyer and Martin Höpner
vii
The State of the Welfare State: German Social Policy 189
between Macroeconomic Retrenchment and
Microeconomic Recalibration
Stephan Leibfried and Herbert Obinger
The Politics of Citizenship in the New Republic 210
Michael Minkenberg
Abstracts 232
Notes on Contributors 237
Index 240
From Stability to Stagnation: Germany at
the Beginning of the Twenty-First
Century
HERBERT KITSCHELT and WOLFGANG STREECK
Among political and economic elites as well as in public opinion a sense
of malaise has spread across Germany since the mid-1990s, after the initial
enthusiasm about German unification, the end of the Cold War and the
acceleration of European integration. In the early 1980s West Germany
was widely celebrated, and indeed celebrated itself, as an island of
economic prosperity, social peace and political stability in an increasingly
turbulent world. Reflecting the opinion of the time, West European Politics
published a Special Issue in 1981 under the title of Germany: Perspectives
on a Stable State. During the 1970s and early 1980s, when the United States
was in a deep crisis of economic performance and public confidence, the
German industrial strategy of ‘diversified quality production’ became an
admired model world-wide, echoing Helmut Schmidt’s proclamation of
Modell Deutschland in his first election campaign of 1976 when he prided
himself on his government’s achievement of apparently unshakeable
tripartite consensus with business and labour.
Two decades later, German political and social institutions and the
policies they support still look very much like the 1980s. But now
suspicions are rampant, inside Germany as much as outside, that
political and institutional stability may no longer be an asset.
Dramatically declining economic performance has raised the question
whether Germany can cope with the economic, demographic and
cultural challenges of a new century. Indeed as the contributions to this
volume show, a case can be made that the same institutions that once
provided for economic prosperity and social cohesion today impede
adjustment and stand in the way of a sustainable response to new
problems. Germany (and this in fact is the argument we will develop in
this introduction) appears to be stuck in a ‘high equilibrium trap’—a
situation in which the institutional and cultural legacies of a successful
past shape the actors’ interpretations of self-interest and of feasible
strategies, as well as the choices available to them, in such a way as to
prevent them from doing what they would otherwise have to do in order
to improve economic outcomes.
2 GERMANY: BEYOND THE STABLE STATE
Until the September 2002 federal election, German political elites and
mass publics had not yet reached the point where the symptoms of the
crisis had become sufficiently painful to make the cost of profound change
appear lower than the losses incurred by continued muddling through.
Just as in Japan, citizens have been losing confidence in the political elites,
but they do not see better alternatives. In both countries, the odd
spectacle unfolds of governing parties becoming unpopular without a
viable opposition emerging (Japan) or an existing opposition being able
to benefit (Germany).1 Given Germany’s painfully slow, incremental
process of political and economic change, for some time there is likely to
be a growing gap between rapid problem accumulation and slow
problem-solving in existing political and economic institutions.
The task of this volume is not to speculate about the duration of the
crisis, let alone the nature of its outcomes, but to contribute to the
analysis of its origins and current dynamics. This introduction sets out
the theme by briefly going over the nature and origins of the ‘German
system’. We then provide some empirical evidence for that system’s
diminishing economic performance in the subsequent decade and discuss
some of the institutional factors that have stood in the way of a successful
defence against decline. Following this, we investigate why there is little
hope for the German political system to overcome its present immobility,
making continued social and economic decline the most likely scenario
for the future. Finally, we address, in a general way, what a German
recovery would require and what political configurations might
conceivably bring about real change.
VIRTU AND FORTUNA: WHAT MADE THE GERMAN
SYSTEM WORK?
The post-war German political economy, as it came into its own in the
early 1980s, consisted of a unique configuration of institutional
mechanisms to co-ordinate capital, labour and public authority. Many
elements of this configuration already existed in the early years of
industrialisation, while others evolved only after World War II.2
Together, the institutions that later seemed to compose a coherent
‘German model’ performed exceedingly well in the global political-
economic context of the ‘Golden Age’ of post-war economic recovery and,
particularly, increasing international trade, allowing West Germany
superior economic performance in comparison to other advanced
capitalist countries. They also supported a remarkably successful
adjustment to the era of declining mass production in the 1970s and 1980s
when Germany, just as Japan, managed to steer clear of the Fordist
production model much faster than other countries, including especially
the United States.3