Policy Analysis in Germany

Blum, Sonja, Schubert, Klaus

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781447347477
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This comprehensive study, part of the International Library of Policy Analysis, brings together for the first time a systemic overview of policy analysis activities in Germany. Written by leading experts in the field – including informed practitioners – it outlines the development of the discipline, identifies its role in academic education and research, and examines its styles and methods. The book also focuses on the role of policy analysis for governments and parliaments, for parties, social partners, and interest groups. By offering a rich and timely analysis of policy analysis in Germany, this book is a valuable resource for academic exchange and for teaching, particularly in the fields of political science, social sciences, economics and geography. Moreover, by its broad, comprehensive understanding of 'policy analysis', the book will be of practical relevance and shape the debate for the future development of policy analysis in Germany and the different spheres where it is practised.

ONE

Policy analysis in Germany: past, present and future of the discipline

Sonja Blum and Klaus Schubert¹

Policy analysis today is not only one of the most important sub-disciplines of political science in Germany, but it is also an integral part of the discipline internationally and has contributed significantly to scientific debates, theory and methods developments. This introductory chapter gives a short overview of the discipline of policy analysis in Germany, its history and its main characteristics. An argument running as a common thread throughout the book is thereby developed, namely, that there is a typically German dualism between academic and applied policy analysis. Also focusing on this aspect, we discuss some of the main findings and arguments of the book chapters within this volume. Against that background, we then provide an outlook on German policy analysis on its way towards further professionalisation.

This book offers the first comprehensive review of policy analysis activities in Germany. This profound knowledge on the status quo is of high practical relevance for the future development of policy analysis in the different spheres where it is practised. Not least, the book aims to identify possible ways to extenuate the German divide between academic and applied policy analysis.

The past: policy analysis as a discipline in Germany

Establishment of the discipline

State-centred societies such as Germany often have a long tradition of political administration as well as internal and external education and advice to political administrators and decision-makers. So the forerunners of policy analysis in Germany – for example, studies on the 'good policeyen' – can be traced back well into the 18th and even the 17th centuries. In the early 19th century academically inspired, groundbreaking reforms of state and administrative structures, the Stein-Hardenberg Reforms, established Prussia as a role model of modern and efficient state administration, and helped push one of the poorest German countries into the first rank of the Deutsche Länder (see Chapter 2). On the other hand, policy analysis as a discipline and in its modern form has only developed since the 1970s, when it was first applied in the policy reforms of the social-liberal coalition governing Germany. While academic policy advice in the 1950s had been exclusively given by the legal professions and in the 1960s was accompanied by economists, social scientists then entered the field (Müller-Rommel, 1984). Similar to the US, from where some of the styles and methods were transferred, the so-called 'planning euphoria' of that time was followed by a rude awakening: disenchantment regarding the actual role of scientific knowledge within political processes on the one hand, and political steering problems that led to the establishment of implementation studies on the other (see Saretzki, 2007, p 589).

During the following two decades, policy analysis as a political science discipline was gradually introduced at German universities, for example, with the early establishment of the Department of Administrative Science² at the University of Constance in 1969 (see Chapter 3, for a much more detailed discussion). The German University of Administrative Sciences had already been founded in Speyer in 1947.³ Overall, the discipline was not developed at those universities which had always been leading the field – in particular, Bonn, Freiburg, Heidelberg or Munich – but, as Gellner and Hammer (2010, p 10) point out, at the new universities in Constance or Mannheim as well as in external research institutes such as the Max Planck Institute⁴ or the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB, Social Science Research Center Berlin). Stoop (2009; see also Chapter 16) recollects the highly controversial establishment of WZB in 1969: its founding fathers were 15 members of the Bundestag (National Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany) – Christian as well as Social Democrats – who wished to improve academic policy advice. The chairs of Berlin's universities as well as the West German University Rector's Conference and the labour union warned of an outsourcing of academic research and its loss of freedom; even the LA Times reported on the fight over 'the first American-style think tank in Europe' (Stoop, 2009, p 59).

This particular case of WZB is also telling for the establishment of policy analysis in general. At that time, the young discipline met with harsh criticism from at least two sides. First, traditional political scientists blamed it for neglecting the most important categories such as 'power', 'institutions', 'democracy' and 'participation' (see Hartwich, 1985). Neo-Marxists, on the other hand, 'denied the autonomy of the political system […] and regarded administrative institutions merely as a reflection of social structures' (Chapter 3; see Ronge and Schmieg, 1971), a fact that they saw blurred by the policy sciences. These debates culminated in a symposium in Hanover in 1984, where policy analysis and its relation to political science were heatedly discussed⁵ (see Hartwich, 1985). Nowadays this event is a popular anecdote and topic of conversation of the more experienced generation of policy analysts in Germany, but it also seems to be more than that, still influencing the boundaries of the discipline.

Perspectives on the discipline

Focusing on the main areas and the development of academic research, Manfred G. Schmidt (1987, pp 185-200) distinguished between different stages of (comparative) policy analysis in Germany, corresponding to international developments. The first stage of the 1960s was characterised by raising the 'Does politics matter?' question, which is actually often answered in the negative. In the second stage, policy analysts predominantly advocated the counter-thesis: 'Politics matters!' The third stage was then marked by turning away from these dualistic positions, asking to what extent polity and politics determined policy. A fourth stage is currently identified, in which the focus is on inter- and supranational influences as well as Europeanisation (Chapter 3, this volume; Obingeret al, 2013, p 2). Taking a more structural than content-oriented focus, policy analysis from the 2000s onwards has entered the stage of a 'normal discipline' within political science in German universities. This is illustrated, for instance, by the publication dates of textbooks: after the first textbooks of the late 1980s and early 1990s (such as Schubert, 1991), no new textbook came out for almost a decade. Then, starting with Schubert and Bandelow (2003, 3rd edn, 2013), the publication of new policy analysis textbooks picked up pace, with Schneider and Janning (2006), Janning and Toens (2008), Blum and Schubert (2009, 2nd edn, 2011) or Gellner and Hammer (2010).

In the early days of German policy analysis, marked by debates on its academic status, some kinds of 'meta examinations' on the state of the discipline were published. Highly important was, as mentioned, the book after the Hanover symposium edited by Hartwich (1985). Eight years later, Héritier's (1993) special issue of the leading German political science journal Politische Vierteljahresschrift not only focused on the state of the art regarding theories and methods, but also on policy analysis as scientific political advice. In the meantime, however, no such review of the state of the discipline has been published – although, admittedly, some books on policy analysis have discussed questions of the discipline, for example, the one edited by Holtmann (2004).⁶ Rather, as argued above, policy analysis developed into a 'normal' political science sub-discipline, wherefore such 'navel-gazing' seemed to be no longer necessary, as it had been in the fight over the legitimacy of the sub-discipline. As Saretzki (2007, p 589) wondered a few years ago: 'In retrospect, the discussion on the role of policy research appears to be the last general debate on the collective self understanding of political science in Germany for almost 20 years.'

However, we think it is high time for an encompassing meta study of German policy analysis for two reasons. First, the discipline has changed tremendously during the almost 30 years since the books edited by Hartwich or Héritier were published. Second, and at least as important, most areas of this volume were not part of these early 'meta studies' (nor any others, to our knowledge), namely, policy analysis for governments, political parties or interest groups. Until now, discourses on policy analysis in Germany were rather focused on academic policy analysis and, to be concise, policy analysis in the broad sense of this book does not seem to be a larger part of the self-conception of the German discipline at all. Now how does this background shape today's characteristics of German policy analysis?

Characteristics of the discipline

Political science in Germany has strong roots in (continental) philosophy and history, that is, traditional political science emphasises normative as well as institutional and structural aspects of politics. Only the influence of functionalism and quantitative empirical research in the 1960s and 1970s let German political science catch up with modern concepts of political science. But there still exists a considerable discrepancy between political science as an academic endeavour and real world policy-making, especially concerning central elements of policy analysis such as political leadership, decision-making, strategy and implementation of policies. To a large extent this can be explained historically. After the Second World War, German political science carried the main burden of educating and informing students and the greater public about the basic elements and functioning of democracy, and establishing itself as an accepted academic discipline. Since then, a certain belief has existed that political science exercises a kind of academic watchdog function towards the state, government and law-makers on the one side, and political participation and public activity on the other. So, a certain distance between political science and real world politics serves as (positive) means to secure independence. The resulting loss of contact and involvement in real world politics seems to these eyes more a kind of cost for academic objectivity and less as a deficit concerning the development or the relevance of the discipline (see Greven, 2009).

This short sketch may be enough to retrace the peculiar dualism between theory and praxis that is characteristic of major parts of German political science. Hand in hand with a usually rather narrow methodological definition of 'science', this dualism favours abstraction and theoretical arguments against a closer political and administrative, in practice relevant and useable, understanding of politics. Against that background, German policy analysis has contributed significantly to the discipline's theories and methods, for example, with the steering theory, network analysis or actor-centred institutionalism (see Chapter 3). On the other hand, real and immediate political, social and economic questions have often been blurred (Schubert, 2003). It is only recently that the mainly younger generation of political scientists has become more ready to get involved in real world questions of politics and to narrow somehow the distance between academic approaches and the requirements of the political world. The development of policy analysis may have contributed to this change. On the other hand, it is quite certain that this development has strongly contributed to a broader acceptance of policy analysis inside and outside political science.

To better understand the peculiarities summarised in this section, we briefly discuss textbooks as they are typically used in teaching policy analysis at universities, in the US as opposed to Germany. For example, Dunn's (2010) Public policy analysis⁷ is structured in five parts: it starts with a general introduction to the methodology of policy analysis, whereas Part II introduces the methods of policy analysis and bears headings such as: 'Structuring policy problems', 'Prescribing preferred policies' or 'Evaluating policy performance'. Similar headings can be found in Part III on methods of policy communication: 'Developing policy arguments' and 'Communicating policy analysis'. Structurally, this outline is oriented on the classical model of the policy cycle and does not fundamentally differ from German textbooks, which are often also structured along the stage heuristic. It is more the contents of the chapters and the style of presentation that differ: Dunn's book aims at providing students with practical skills to conduct policy analyses. Whereas German textbooks usually offer fine overviews to students on what is done in policy research, English textbooks often rather focus on teaching students how to do policy research, frequently with an explicit focus on working 'in the field'. Of course, this might only be related to different teaching approaches and didactics in general and not be in any way characteristic of this special discipline.

However, bearing this in mind, we took a quite strong hypothesis as the starting point for this book, namely, that there is a typically German dualism between policy-making and political science, academic and applied policy analysis – reflecting an attitude that sharply distinguishes between praxis and theory. At the same time, however, we argue that policy analysis in such a broad sense as defined in this book exists in Germany, and that a stronger recognition and dialogue between the academic, explicit and rather applied, implicit fields of policy analysis is quite necessary and would be very fruitful.

Before moving to the findings of this book, we wish to point out some conceptual aspects. There are three terms most common in the German language to denote the field, namely, Policy-Analyse, Policy-Forschung (policy research) and Politikfeldanalyse(literally, policy area analysis). They are largely used synonymously and are, more or less, equally common. While – as Wildavsky (1987, p 15) argued so convincingly⁸ – there cannot be one definition of 'policy analysis', in this book we want to understand it in a broad way. Policy analysis can be focused either on the explanation of policies or on providing advice about policy solutions (Windhoff-Héritier, 1987, p 115), where it may draw on a variety of theories, methods and disciplinary approaches.

Speaking of 'policy advice', it is important to point out that this is not really part of the self-conception of German policy analysis. What is more and quite strange, even though German political science increasingly pays attention to the role of 'knowledge' and 'advice' in policy-making, it does not really link or extend this discussion to itself as a discipline – neither empirically, nor critically. Greven (2008) saw himself reminded of the biblical failing to see the beam in one's own eye here. Of course, not all 'policy advice' is 'policy analysis'. And particularly since the connection to 'policy analysis' is rarely established, the increasing number of studies, for example, on 'policy advice' by think tanks or on 'evaluation studies' by extramural research institutes, are not automatically studies on 'policy analysis in Germany'. This notwithstanding, policy analyses play ...

Table of contents

• Coverpage
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables and figures
• Notes on contributors
• Editors' introduction to the series
• 1 Policy analysis in Germany: past, present and future of the discipline