Merkel Government Research Articles

Gender and energy policy making under the first Merkel government

Previous research has argued that female and male policy makers do not differ except on gendered policy issues, but little empirical research has actually examined the influence of a leader's gender in non-gendered policy areas. This article examines policy making under Chancellor Merkel in energy policy (not gendered), and compares it to policy making in reconciliation policy (a gendered issue). Significant changes in reconciliation policy were carried out under the leadership of Merkel's Minister for Family Affairs, Ursula von der Leyen. This article finds that on energy policy, in contrast, Merkel herself took a leadership role. For both policy areas, Merkel moved away from the traditional Christian Democratic standpoint. The article concludes that female leaders (perhaps particularly those on the right) may be more willing to take on a leadership role for non-gendered policy areas than on highly gendered ones. Therefore, the major difference by issue area is not so much what policy gets passed as how it gets passed.

European Security Order and Germany: Challenges and Dilemmas of the Merkel government

This paper analyses German foreign and security policy under the Merkel government, especially Germany's role and involvement in European security architectures. By comparing NATO out-of-area deployment of Bundeswehr, German forces, in EU and NATO operations, the study discusses challenges and dilemmas that Germany has faced in cooperating with these organizations. As Europe's own security policies such as Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and then European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) have developed, Germany has been actively involved in operations in the framework of these policies. Germany has also participated in emerging EU operations; the Merkel government eventually led Operation EUFOR RD Congo in 2006. As European operations have evolved in the areas of peacekeeping and crisis management so far, Germany has not encountered dilemmas in dispatching armed forces overseas. It rather welcomed EU operations that have civilian character as German Basic Law sets a certain conditions in deploying its forces overseas. Because of this limitation, Germany is referred as ‘civilian power’ that has strategic culture of ‘anti-militarism’. Thus, Germany will actively support further evolution of the European security architecture with such a civilian character. On the contrary, Germany under the Merkel government has encountered dilemmas in dispatching forces to NATO operations. In particular, German behaviours in International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan have increasingly attracted criticism from other NATO member states after a failure in Operation Medusa in 2006. Since then, Germany has been under pressure of sending units to the southern area of Afghanistan that is considered to be more dangerous and of engaging in combat operations. So far, German government has expanded its military commitments in Afghanistan in a series of small steps. For example, Berlin has decided to dispatch Tornado jets to the south. Pressure for increasing presence of the German forces in the south has not halt, although Germany has avoided combat operations because of the Basic Law. While increased presence would highlight continued German engagement and thus mitigate criticism from NATO allies, it would prove unpopular among Germans who have registered significant public opposition to the Afghan campaign. Germany under the Merkel government confronts with the dilemmas between maintaining solidarity and credibility with the allies and managing domestic public opinion.

The Merkel Government's Politics of the Past

Angela Merkel came to power at a crucial time in regards to Germany's relationship with its past. Where would she position herself in light of Gerhard Schröder's approach that had offered a new way of accepting responsibility for the past and integrating it into the twenty-first century present by explicitly making it a key element of German national identity, but also in view of her East German biography? Would she continue and maybe even reinforce the institutionalization of Holocaust-centered memory and-given the forceful return of the topic of German victimhood-complement it with the institutionalization of the memory of German suffering, or would she emphasize the latter at the expense of the former? This paper attempts to answer these questions by examining Merkel's politics of the past during her first three years in office.

Germany, Afghanistan, and the Future of NATO

The resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2007-08 has meant that NATO and its international security assistance force (ISAF) have had to evolve into a counterinsurgency operation in more and more parts of the country. Its chances of an easy victory are slim. According to official United Nations documents, neither ISAF nor the Afghan authorities have provided sufficiently security, with the result that the political and economic recon- struction process is faltering. The Taliban, related armed groups, and the drug economy represent fundamental threats to still-fragile political, eco- nomic, and social institutions. Despite tactical successes by national and in- ternational military forces, anti- government elements are far from defeated. Thirty- six out of 376 districts, including most districts in the east, southeast, and south, remain largely inaccessible to Afghan officials and aid workers. This hinders the delivery of humanitarian assistance to wide parts of Afghan society.1 Military experts in Kabul suggest that the Afghan capital is about to be surrounded by Taliban- controlled territory.It is obvious that ISAF is currently ill-equipped and inadequately trained to confront the insurgency and that the forces it has are already overstretched. Constrained by a shortage of troops and restrictions to use them appropriately, NATO is able to establish full military control only temporarily in various areas and thus cannot provide security for the population in the long run. The force has had support from the Afghans over the last few years, though this seems to be slowly slipping because of a lack of overall progress. To maintain the current ISAF operation within the existing framework raises difficult questions: what is the operational goal of the mission and what are necessary elements of a successful strategy? What is the point of the mission if member states are not prepared to raise the necessary resources to make success a reasonable prospect? So far the government and parliament have avoided those questions. Instead, Germany has insisted several times on deploying the army only in the north of the country and repeatedly rejected providing additional troops or equipment to the Afghan south, where Canadian troops are based in volatile Kandahar province.Given this situation on the ground and the ambivalent results of the latest NATO summit in Bucharest with regard to allied support for the Canadian ISAF contingent, Germany currently enjoys a prominent place in the mind of many Canadians. One observes almost a German obsession, which has to do exclusively with Afghanistan. Mostly it is expressed as harsh criticism of foreign and security policy.In the fall of 2007, the Globe and Mail devoted two controversial editorial pieces exclusively to the military role in Afghanistan. In September 2007 Marcus Gee was highly critical of Germany, asking are our allies? Where is Germany? He emphasized that Canada and Germany share a commitment to democracy, to the rights of women and minorities, and to the right of oppressed peoples to free from fear; he stated that there would not be a better place than Afghanistan to stand together for those values. Gee concluded the piece by demanding that the Merkel government put its money where its mouth is and step up with a major military contribution to the Afghan south. He reminded Berlin of transatlantic risk- and burdensharing in NATO and ended just short of calling Germany an unreliable ally.2Six weeks later Jeffrey Simpson struck a different tone. He was rather understanding of the position and explained to the Canadian audience why Germany won't be replacing Canada in Afghanistan, pointing to constraints on the government derived from domestic politics. Referring to the parliamentary vote on the renewal of the ISAF mandate in the same month, he noted that the parliament had signed Germany up for more duty in Afghanistan but only in the safer northern part. …

Die neuen Grundsatzprogramme der deutschen Parteien aus ordnungspolitischer Sicht / The German Parties’ new manifestos from an ordo-liberal perspective

Zusammenfassung Im Mittelpunkt des Beitrags steht eine Analyse der drei neuen Grundsatzprogramme, die von den Regierungsparteien der Großen Koalition im Herbst 2007 kurz nacheinander beschlossen wurden und die älteren Programme von 1989 (SPD), 1993 (CSU) und 1994 (CDU) ersetzt haben. Die bisherige Bilanz der Regierung Merkel, die Erweiterung des Parteienwettbewerbs durch die Etablierung der LINKEN als fünfter Partei sowie die programmatischen Standortbestimmungen haben das deutsche Parteiensystems in einer Weise gewandelt, die nicht zuletzt nach dem Stellenwert und die Mehrheitsfähigkeit von ordnungspolitischen Positionen fragen lässt. Der Beitrag analysiert die neuen Parteiprogramme in Bezug auf ordnungspolitisch zentrale Problem- und Handlungsfelder und will einige Schlussfolgerungen ziehen, welchen Herausforderungen ordnungstheoretisches und ordnungspolitisches Denken gerecht werden muss, um seinen Einfluss auf die programmatischen Grundlinien der deutschen Politik zu verteidigen und nach Möglichkeit wieder zu stärken.

The German Predicament: The Red Lines of the Security and Defence Policy of the Berlin Republic

The election of Angela Merkel as the first female Chancellor of Germany does not herald a fundamental transformation of Germany's security and defence policy but marks a high degree of continuity with the policies of the red-green government. The double challenge facing the Merkel government is its readiness to back up the country's institutional and material commitments to both NATO and EU by concrete deeds and to reconcile the ever bigger external demands with the country's culture of reticence. To bring these competing external and internal demands into a lasting equilibrium is the true challenge to the systematic scientist's approach of Chancellor Merkel. To the disappointment of some allies and partners, this highly demanding task may prove again like trying to square the circle.

The Grand Coalition: Precedents and Prospects

While the Federal Republic has been famously characterized as a "grand coalition state," the Merkel government, formed in the after-math of the 2005 federal election, is only the second CDU/CSU-SPD coalition at the federal level since 1949. A comparison of the present administration with the first grand coalition government (1966-1969) reveals a wealth of differences that include some of the basic parameters of governing and governance in Germany, such as the structure of the party system and the overall public climate. Also, the personnel features and patterns of informal coalition governance under Chancellors Angela Merkel and Kurt-Georg Kiesinger display major differences. Arguably the single most important difference between the two administrations, however, relates to the level of public policy, with the Merkel government seeking to reverse some of the key decisions of its historical predecessor. Such u-turn dynamics have been particularly tangible in the field of federal system reform.