Dragnet-Controls and Government Ideology

ABSTRACT

In many European countries established leftwing and rightwing parties have been threatened by policy convergence and, in turn, new populist parties that offer more polarized platforms. I investigate whether government ideology influences dragnet-controls – controls of persons conducted by the police without having any suspicion that the controlled person committed a crime. They took effect after the Schengen Agreement in 1995. I propose dragnet-controls to be a prime example of ideology-induced policies implemented by established parties. Dragnet-controls confine citizens’ liberties, but may help to detect criminals. Using data from the 16 German states over the period 1995–2017, I show that rightwing governments have been active in implementing dragnet-controls and leftwing governments have denied dragnet-controls since the mid 1990s. When evaluating how government/party ideology influences individual policies, previous econometric studies ignored initiatives in parliament. My study also considers initiatives in parliament. I conjecture that, since 2015, the rightwing CDU has used initiatives to introduce/extend dragnet-controls to also deal with the upcoming threat of rightwing populism. Future research should examine policy-differences between the established parties regarding more fine-grained policy measures also in other European countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Dragnet-controls
• government ideology
• established parties
• populism
• Schengen Agreement
• European countries

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• D72
• F22
• P16

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for comments from Marc Debus, Tim Friehe, Klaus Gründler, Manuela Krause, Felix Rösel, Lukas Rudolph, Heinrich Ursprung, Georg Wenzelburger, and two anonymous referees, and Julia Bakeberg, Dirk Bölter, Christian Dehner, Knud Dietrich, Roland Gewalt, Andreas Gram, Katharina Humbert, Timur Hussein, Michael Kraska, Björn Lakenmacher, Andreas Mai, Frank Marten, Lorenz Menz, Dirk Reitze, Dirk Sauter, Werner Schöne, Erwin Teufel, Ronald Wiezorek, Andreas Züfle, for providing information on the dragnet-controls in the individual states and Lisa Giani-Contini for proof-reading. Julian Dörr, Anna Dudel, Felix Michalik, Julian Milek, and Lukas Rohleder provided excellent research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. On policy convergence in Germany see, for example, De Haan and Zelhorst (1993), Zohlnhöfer (2003), Debus (2008), Potrafke (2012) and Kauder and Potrafke (2016). On ideology-induced policies in EU and OECD countries, see Schmidt (1996), Jäger (2017), Potrafke (2017, 2018), Schmitt and Zohlnhöfer (forthcoming), and Zohlnhöfer, Engler, and Kathrin (2018).

2. In September 2017, German economics professors believed that increasing similarities of the established leftwing and rightwing party have contributed to the electoral success of the new populist rightwing party in Germany: http://www.cesifo-group.de/ifoHome/research/Departments/Public-Finance/Oekonomenpanel/Archiv/2017/201709.html.

3. Terrorist attacks influence citizens’ political preferences and tend to induce citizens to become more rightwing (e.g. Economou and Kollias 2015, forthcoming).

4. Herwartz and Theilen (2014) describe how state government ideology predicted efforts to collect tax revenues.

5. Blum and Potrafke (2019) examine how changes of government influence compliance with the NATO two percent target. On government ideology and US troop deployments see Stravers (forthcoming).

6. On law-and-order legislation at the German national level see Staff and Wenzelburger (2016) and Wenzelburger and Staff (2019).

7. § 13 para. I Nr. 5 Bayerisches Polizeiaufgabengesetz (BayPAG), § 21 para . I Nr. 3 BayPAG, § 22 para. I Nr. 4 BayPAG.

8. http://www.abendblatt.de/politik/article205422751/Keine-Einigung-auf-umfassende-Schleierfahndung.html.

9. § 26 I Nr. 6 Polizeigesetz (PolG).

10. http://pardok.parlament-berlin.de/starweb/adis/citat/VT/15/DruckSachen/d15-1818.pdf.

11. https://www.parlament-berlin.de/ados/18/IIIPlen/vorgang/d18-0093.pdf http://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article210263963/Nach-Merkel-Kritik-Rot-Rot-Gruen-lehnt-Schleierfahndung-ab.html http://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/kolumne/bei-der-suche-nach-verbrechern-sind-berlins-polizisten-die-haende-gebunden.

12. § 12 para. 1 Nr. 6 Brandenburgisches Polizeigesetz (BbgPolG), and § 11, 12, 22 and 33 BbgPolG.

13. https://www.bremische-buergerschaft.de/drs_abo/2017-01-24_Drs-19-914_6fde0.pdf.

14. https://www.weser-kurier.de/bremen/bremen-stadt_artikel,-buergerschaft-gegen-cdusicherheitspaket-_arid,1,650,133.html.

15. Printed matters of the state parliament 16/22 and 16/916.

16. § 18 para. 2 Nr. 6 Hessisches Gesetz über die öffentliche Sicherheit und Ordnung (HSOG). See Stephan (2004) on dragnet controls in Hesse.

17. http://www.nilas.niedersachsen.de/starweb/NILAS/servlet.starweb?path=NILAS/lisshfl.web&id=NILASWEBDOKFL&search=(DART%3d%28D%5cKA%29+AND+WP%3d13+AND+DNR%2cKORD%3d3231+AND+NOT+%281SPER%2cSPER%3d%3f%2a%29+AND+NOT+%281SPER%2cSPER%3d%3f%2a%29)+AND+DID%3DK-28680&format=WEBDOKFL § 12 Abs. 6 Niedersächsisches Gesetz über die öffentliche Sicherheit und Ordnung (SOG ND).

18. Printed matter of the state parliament 14/38.

19. Printed matter of the state parliament 14/2020.

20. http://www.landesverfassungsgericht-mv.de/presse/aktuelle/download/LVFG2-98EndU.pdf.

21. § 27a Sicherheits- und Ordnungsgesetz des Landes Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (SOG M-V).

22. https://www.wp.de/wp-info/online-durchsuchung-polizisten-bleiben-aussen-vor-id872397.html.

23. Printed matters of the state parliament 13/6587 and 13/6871; http://www.cdu-nrw-fraktion.de/sites/default/files/media/doc/antrag_drucksache_16-11307.pdf.

24. http://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/landespolitik/landtagswahl/ltw-tv-duell-vorbericht-100.html.

25. https://www.cdu-nrw.de/sites/default/files/media/docs/vertrag_nrw-koalition_2017.pdf.

26. http://www.landtag.rlp.de/landtag/drucksachen/317-14.pdf and printed matters of the state parliament 14/1439.

27. § 9a Saarländisches Polizeigesetzes (SPolG).

28. § 19 para. 1 Nr. 5 Polizeigesetz des Freistaates Sachsen.

29. Gesetz über die öffentliche Ordnung und Sicherheit des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt (SOG LSA) (GVBl. 2000, p. 444).

30. Printed matter of the state parliament 3/4958.

31. SOG 10.07.2003 (GVBl. LSA p. 150).

32. Printed matter of the state parliament 15/1257.

33. § 180 para. 3 Landesverwaltungsgesetz Schleswig-Holstein (LVwG SH).

34. § 180 para. 3 LVwG SH, § 181 Abs. 1 S 2 LVwG and § 202 Abs. 1 N 3 LVwG.

35. http://www.landtag.ltsh.de/export/sites/landtagsh/infothek/wahl18/plenum/plenprot/2016/18-137_12-16.pdf#page=59.

36. § 14 para. 1 Nr. 5 Thüringer Gesetz über die Aufgaben und Befugnisse der Polizei (Polizeiaufgabengesetz – PAG).

37. There is no suitable econometric research design to estimate the causal effects of government ideology on introducing/designing dragnet-controls using panel data with a small sample. When estimating a linear panel data model with Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), for example, I cannot rule out that the government ideology variable would be endogenous. First, reverse causality may well be an issue: voters who do not agree with the state government’s law-and-order policy are likely to vote the incumbent government out of office. Second, there may be omitted variables being correlated with government ideology and the presence of dragnet-controls. Econometric techniques to overcome the endogeneity issue are not available for my sample of the German states. Scholars have not yet proposed a suitable instrumental variable for government ideology. Exploiting close vote margins by using, for example, Regression Discontinuity Designs (RDD) is not possible either because of the small sample (there are 16 German states and dragnet-controls were introduced in 1995 for the first time). Potrafke and Roesel (2018) employ RDD to examine ideology-induced health policies in the German states; the sample includes data since the 1950s.