Abstract
Based on interviews with the main German actors and on secondary sources, the article examines the recent development of the German political economy, and the German strategy vis-à-vis the Euro zone. Germany is a trading state whose economic growth is strongly export-led. Until the years 1990s, strong institutional rigidities, both in industrial relations and in the welfare state, contributed to reconcile export growth with household consumption, thus keeping the German “tiger” on a leash. From the early 1990s on, however, both industrial relations and social protections have been strongly liberalized, thus further stimulating external competitiveness and reducing the role of consumption in the German growth model. The unleashed trading state shapes the German response to the Euro crisis and the austerity policies that Germany imposes to Europe. These policies are strongly supported by political parties, social actors, and public opinion in Germany, and the likelihood that they change in the near future is minimal.
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Notes
- 1.
Replicating the graphical analyses with the countries of Western Europe or the members of the Eurozone in Western Europe does not alter the conclusions. For the sake of clarity, we therefore restrict the comparison to Germany and these mature democracies of the OECD.
- 2.
Data are from Eurostat. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/income-and-living-conditions/data/database, last downloaded on 2015/04/10. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/income_social_inclusion_living_conditions/data/main_tables, last downloaded on 2014/01/15.
- 3.
Leaflet published by the Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen Arbeitgeberverbände, April 2013: ‘Germany’s export strength–bad for Europe?’
- 4.
This is another example of discursive institutionalism. It builds on approaches that emphasize the ‘coordinative discourse’ of policy construction via discourse coalitions, epistemic communities and knowledge regimes as well as those concerned with the ‘communicative discourse’ between elites and the public through deliberation and contestation with mass publics, the media, electorates, social movements and the everyday public’ (Schmidt 2014: 3). See also Lehmbruch (2013).
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Armingeon, K., Baccaro, L. (2015). The Crisis and Germany: The Trading State Unleashed. In: Schneider, V., Eberlein, B. (eds) Complex Democracy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15850-1_11
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