Ideational Leadership in German Welfare State Reform: How Politicians and Policy Ideas Transform Resilient Institutions (Amsterdam University Press - Changing Welfare States Series)

255 Pages·2010·0.98 MB·English

by  Sabina Stiller

Sabina Stiller
Ideational Leadership
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How do major reforms occur in notoriously resilient welfare states? r n
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This book argues that ‘ideational leaders’ have had an important impact How Politicians and Policy Ideas
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on structural social policy reforms in Germany. The argument is based on a
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in-depth case studies of individual reforms in health care, pensions and c Transform Resilient Institutions
unemployment insurance since the early 1990s. Moreover, the book offers
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a long-term perspective on policy change in these fields and in another d
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area which has recently seen considerable reforms, family policy. The study
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concludes that this traditionally Bismarckian welfare state has embarked on a i
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path of ‘hybridization’ that confronts German politics with growing societal n
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divisions. Ideational Leadership in German Welfare State Reform provides l

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new insights into how policy ideas and leadership have shaped social policy
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trajectories and the state of the German Sozialstaat. a
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Sabina Stiller is assistant professor in Comparative Politics at the Department h
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of Political Science of Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. p

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“This is a first-rate book that lends great insights into the transformation of social policy in
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Germany.  It uses an innovative theoretical approach that highlights the role of ‘ideational
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leadership’ in explaining institutional change, an important new concept in the literature.”  r
Vivien A. Schmidt, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Boston University m
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isbn 978 90 8964 186 1 S
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www.aup.nl
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Amsterdam University Press
A m s t e r d a m U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s
omslag sabina stiller_156x234mm.indd 1 19-11-09 09:29
ideational leadership in german welfare state reform
CHANGING WELFARE STATES
Advanced welfare states seem remarkably stable at fi rst glance. Although
most member states of the European Union (EU) have undertaken compre-
hensive welfare reform, especially since the 1990s, much comparative wel-
fare state analysis portrays a ‘frozen welfare landscape’. Social spending is
stable. However, if we interpret the welfare state as more than aggregate so-
cial spending and look at long-term trends, we can see profound transfor-
mations across several policy areas, ranging from labour market policy and
regulation, industrial relations, social protection, social services like child
care and education, pensions, and long-term care. Th is series is about tra-
jectories of change. Have there been path-breaking welfare innovations or
simply attempts at political reconsolidation? What new policies have been
added, and with what consequences for competitiveness, employment, in-
come equality and poverty, gender relations, human capital formation, and
fi scal sustainability? What is the role of the European Union in shaping na-
tional welfare state reform? Are advanced welfare states moving in a similar
or even convergent direction, or are they embarking on ever more divergent
trajectories of change? Th ese issues raise fundamental questions about the
politics of reform. If policy-makers do engage in major reforms (despite the
numerous institutional, political and policy obstacles), what factors enable
them to do so? While the overriding objective of the series is to trace tra-
jectories of contemporary welfare state reform, the editors also invite the
submission of manuscripts which focus on theorizing institutional change
in the social policy arena.
editors of the series
Gøsta Esping-Andersen, University of Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
Anton Hemerijck, the Netherlands Scientific Council for Government
Policy (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid − wrr)
Kees van Kersbergen, Free University Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Kimberly Morgan, George Washington University, Washington, USA
Romke van der Veen, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Jelle Visser, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Ideational Leadership in
German Welfare State
Reform
How Politicians and Policy Ideas
Transform Resilient Institutions
Sabina Stiller
Cover illustration: J.M.W. Turner, War. Th e Exile and the Rock Limpet, ex-
hibited 1842, oil on canvas, 79,4 x 79,4 cm, Tate Britain, London
Cover design: Jaak Crasborn bno, Valkenburg a/d Geul
Layout: V3-Services, Baarn
isbn 978 90 8964 186 1
e-isbn 978 90 4851 174 7
nur 754 / 759
© Sabina Stiller / Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2010
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved
above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced
into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (elec-
tronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the
written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the
book.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 7
1 Introduction 9
. Sources of Welfare State Persistence 
. Major Welfare State Reforms Do Occur 
. Ideational Leadership and Structural Reforms 
. Structure of the Book 
2 Ideational Leadership: Key to Overcoming Welfare State
Resistance to Change 21
. Situating IL Among Reform Explanations 
. Contributions from the Leadership Literature 
. Contributions from the Ideational Literature 
. IL as a Joint Concept 
. Aspects, Mechanisms and Effects of IL 
. IL and Theorizing on Gradual Institutional Change 
. Conclusion 
3 A Bird’s-Eye View of the German Welfare State 45
. Germany as Prototype of the Bismarckian Welfare State 
. Sources of Resilience: Political Institutions and Policy Legacies 
. How Have German Governments Responded to Pressures? 
. General Patterns of Change in Major Programmes 
. Conclusion 
4 Transformation of Health Care Policy?
The Legacy of Minister Seehofer 75
. A Sketch of Statutory Health Insurance in the Early s 
. The  Structural Health Care Reform Act 
. Seehofer’s Role: A Minister ‘Taking on the Sharks’ 
. The  Health Care Reorganization Acts 

. The Role of Minister Seehofer: Fighting Against the Tide 
. Conclusion 
5 Transforming Public Pensions: the Riester Pension Reform 111
. The Reform Process: Chronology, Actors and Policy Positions 
. Tracing Ideational Leadership 
. Assessing the Role of Ideational Leadership 
. Conclusion 
6 Transforming Unemployment Policy:
The Hartz IV Reform 145
. The Reform Process: Chronology, Actors and Policy Positions 
. Tracing Ideational Leadership 
. Assessing the Role of IL 
. Conclusion 
7 Conclusion 181
. Family Policy: From Familialism Towards Reconciliating
Work and Family Life 
. Transforming Bismarckian Principles 
. Towards a New Hybrid Welfare State Edifice 
List of Abbreviations 201
List of Interviewees 203
Notes 205
Bibliography 235
Index 249
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
This book started out as a (much lengthier) doctoral thesis at the Depart-
ment of Political Science of Radboud University Nijmegen. In its present
form, it is a shorter yet extended story of how ideational leaders have
managed to transform the German welfare state. This conversion pro-
cess was not simple at times, but as one of my thesis supervisors, Kees
van Kersbergen, told me some time ago, ‘schrijven is schrappen’: writing
means cutting down on words. The result is an account of reform pro-
cesses that reflects much more on the contemporary shape of the German
Sozialstaat than I could do in my thesis, and which also sheds light on
recent developments in family policy.
It is impossible to acknowledge everyone who has been of help in the
process of preparing a book, but I will give it a try. I am particularly grate-
ful to Jelle Visser and Anton Hemerijck for encouraging me to rewrite my
thesis for the ‘Changing Welfare State’ series published by Amsterdam
University Press. Anton, I am indebted to you for your insightful com-
ments on how to turn my thesis into more of a ‘story’. And I appreciate
your patience during the whole process, which took place during a rather
unpredictable time period: before, during and after my maternity leave for
my son Simon.
When working on a book, you surely benefi t from a supportive working
environment and I could consider myself fortunate in this respect, both
with my former colleagues at the Centrum voor Duitsland-Studies, and my
current colleagues at the Department of Political Science and Administra-
tive Science at Radboud University Nijmegen. Let me thank you for your
collegiality at all times, intellectual stimulation, and helpful comments and
suggestions all along. My thanks also goes to my thesis supervisors, Michiel
de Vries, Kees van Kersbergen, and Bob Lieshout for their support, encour-
agement, and constructive comments on the main arguments of my thesis,
which still form the core of the present book. Moreover, I am grateful to
Monique Leyenaar, Karen Anderson, Vivien Schmidt, Herbert Obinger and
others for their comments and constructive criticism of my thesis.

As it would have been difficult to write about the context of German
reforms while being in the Netherlands, I spent a fair amount of time in
Germany: mostly for interviews but also as a visiting researcher during a
two-month stay at the Zentrum für Sozialpolitik (ZeS) of the University
of Bremen. I would like to thank all the people I interviewed for sharing
their thoughts and inside knowledge about reform processes in their of-
fices in Berlin, Hannover, Bochum, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Bonn, Bremen,
Leipzig and Nuremberg. At the ZeS, I would like to thank Gisela Hege-
mann-Mahltig for enabling my stay, as well as Eric Seils, Herbert Obinger,
Petra Buhr and others for making me feel welcome and discussing Ger-
man social policy developments and scholarship.
I would like to acknowledge a diverse group of people who helped me
to do the research underlying this book in one way or another. Amit Das
Gupta and Mona and Cesar Pastor for their hospitality during my trips to
Berlin, and my friends in Bavaria and elsewhere for their support ‘at a dis-
tance’. My Dutch colleagues and friends: Minna van Gerven, for continu-
ing to share good and bad times since we have finished our PhDs; Gerry
van der Kamp-Alons, Barbara Vis, and Angela Wigger for their ongoing
companionship and encouragement; Nishavda Thullner-Klossek, Laura
Gerritsen and Annemarie Gerritsen for your unfailing ability to listen; my
English friend Simon Shaw for the proof-reading of the earlier version of
this book.
Finally, I thank my parents for their encouragement and for supporting
whatever I chose to do in life, even if this means writing ‘yet another book’.
Martin, my loving companion and source of realistic optimism, I dedicate
this book to you.
Sabina Stiller
September 2009

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
1 Introduction
‘Partisan confl ict, political stalemate and, more recently, major reform
eff orts – for example, on questions of labour markets, economic policy-
making and social policy – for the time being leave open the question
of whether we are witnessing a recalibration or a dismantling of Ger-
many’s semisovereign state.’
(Katzenstein 2005: 304)
From today’s perspective, there is at least one conventional wisdom in
welfare state studies: mature welfare states have been facing major strains
for several decades. During the 1990s, scholars started to investigate the
responses of welfare states to those strains. What they found, though,
were not fundamental policy shifts but an intriguing contradiction: al-
though structural pressures for change could no longer be ignored, welfare
state programmes had remained relatively stable. The main approaches
that tried to explain such stability despite increasing demands for major
change were historical institutionalism (Pierson 1994, 1996), and welfare
regime theory (Esping-Andersen 1990, 1999). In those perspectives, pow-
erful institutional and electoral mechanisms and regime-specific charac-
teristics prevented comprehensive reforms of European welfare states.
Ever since, these explanations have been increasingly called into question,
as numerous substantial reforms have taken place across Europe from the
late 1990s onwards. Apparently, welfare state institutions were not those
immovable objects – like oversized oil tankers – they were thought to
be. Given these developments, an enormous research interest in how and
why welfare state reform occurs has ensued.
Even in the Federal Republic of Germany, the well-established Sozi-
alstaat has undergone significant reform efforts, as the above quote by
senior observer Peter Katzenstein underlines. This is remarkable since
Germany is certainly not an icon of policy flexibility: on the contrary, it
was long considered the example par excellence of institutional and po-
