The Policy of Strategic Demobilisation: The Social Policy of the Christian Democratic–Liberal Coalition, 2009–13

Abstract

This article addresses two research questions: which course did the CDU, CSU–FDP coalition government choose to follow in social policy from 2009 to 2013? And what relationships exist between social policy in this period and the Bundestag election in 2013? The analysis of primary and secondary data reveals both continuity and discontinuity in social policy in the 17th legislative period of the Bundestag. The decisions and non-decisions on social protection and labour market regulation in this period mirror a wide variety of determinants. These include partisan effects, electoral cycles, co-governing judges and anonymous social policy of market forces. The data also suggest that the CDU/CSU has been relatively successful in its strategy of ‘asymmetric demobilisation’, the strategy of changing its social policy profile to one more similar to that of its social democratic opponent, in order to demobilise the SPD's voters rather than mobilising them. More ambivalent has been the electoral outcome of the FDP's role in social policy. The FDP's first foray into leading a large welfare state ministry, the Federal Ministry of Health, in 2009 to 2013 did not prove to be a winning proposition for the Liberals electorally. Social policy in general and welfare state recalibration in particular thus seem to be an electorally especially risky project for a liberal party such as the FDP.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author wishes to thank Deanna Stewart for the translation of this manuscript.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Manfred G. Schmidt is Professor in Political Science at the Department of Political Science, University of Heidelberg. Schmidt's main research areas are Politics and Policy in Germany, Comparative Social Policy and Democratic Theory.

Notes

1. ‘Black’ refers to the CDU/CSU; ‘yellow’ is the colour representing the liberal FDP.

2. The article is based mainly on a review of the literature and an analysis of documents on social policy during the 17th legislative period of the German Bundestag (2009–13).

3. Plenarprotokoll 17/3 – Deutscher Bundestag – Stenografischer Bericht – 3. Sitzung – Berlin, 10 Nov. 2009, p.30.

4. Stenographisches Protokoll des Deutschen Bundestages, 9. Wahlperiode, Bd. 122. Bonn, 121. Sitzung, 13 Oct. 1982, p.7213.

5. Ibid., p.7231.

6. Manfred G. Schmidt (ed.), Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1982–1989: Finanzielle Konsolidierung und institutionelle Reform (Geschichte der Sozialpolitik in Deutschland seit 1945, ed. by Bundesministerium für Gesundheit und Soziale Sicherung/Bundesarchiv, Vol. 7) (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2005).

7. Wachstum, Bildung, Zusammenhalt. Koalitionsvertrag zwischen CDU, CSU und FDP. 17. Legislaturperiode, Berlin.

8. Peter Hall, ‘Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State’, Comparative Politics 25/2 (1993), pp.275–96.

9. Plenarprotokoll 17/3 – Deutscher Bundestag – Stenografischer Bericht – 3. Sitzung – Berlin, Dienstag, 10 Nov. 2009, pp.34–5.

10. Ibid., p. 36.

11. The exception was the period from 27 Oct. 1998 to 12 Jan. 2001, in which the position of the Federal Minister of Health was taken by Andrea Fischer (Alliance ’90/The Greens).

12. Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, Macht und Armut: Eine theoretisch-empirische Untersuchung. Einleitung von Claus Offe (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1977).

13. Reimut Zohlnhöfer, Globalisierung der Wirtschaft und finanzpolitische Anpassungsreaktionen in Westeuropa (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009), p.369.

14. Winfried Schmähl, ‘Der Paradigmenwechsel in der Alterssicherungspolitik: die Riester-Reform von 2001 – Entscheidungen, Begründunge, Folgen’, Soziale Sicherheit 60/12 (2011), pp.405–14.

15. Cf. Manfred G. Schmidt, ‘Parties', in Francis G. Castles, Stephan Leibfried, Jane Lewis, Herbert Obinger and Christopher Pierson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010), pp.211–26.

16. Guido Westerwelle, ‘Vergesst die Mitte nicht’, Die Welt, 2 Feb. 2010. The sentence ‘Those who promise people effortless prosperity are just inviting late Roman decadence’ was really held against Westerwelle.

17. If the average additional contribution is more than 2 per cent of the portion of an insurance holder's income that is subject to contributions, he will be refunded the difference out of tax receipts.

18. The social insurance contribution rates had been raised before that, though: in 2010, there was a rise in unemployment insurance rates from 2.8 to 3.0 per cent, and in health insurance rates from 14.9 to 15.5 per cent; in 2013, there was a rise in long-term care insurance rates from 1.95 to 2.05 per cent.

19. Jürgen Wasem, Professor in Health Economics at the Universität Duisburg-Essen, in an interview, Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung, No. 98, 27 Apr. 2012, p.18.

20. Koalitionsvertrag, p.22.

21. Ibid.

22. http://www.boeckler.de/pdf/ta_mindestloehne_aentg.pdf; WSI-Tarifarchiv, Stand Januar 2013.

23. Schmidt, ‘Parties'.

24. Martin Höpner, Alexander Petring, Daniel Seikell and Benjamin Werner, ‘Liberalisierungspolitik. Eine Bestandsaufnahme des Rückbaus wirtschafts- und sozialpolitischer Interventionen in entwickelten Industrieländern’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 63/1 (2011), pp.1–32.

25. The title of the position paper by the FDP General Secretary at the time, Christian Lindner, cf. ‘FDP legt Konzept für Sozialstaatsreform vor’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No.59, 11 Mar. 2010, p.1.

26. Thomas Gerlinger, ‘Gesundheitspolitik in Zeiten der Krise: Auf inkrementellem Weg zur Systemtransformation?’, Zeitschrift für Sozialreform 59/3 (2013), pp.337–64.

27. Hans Rosenberg, Große Depression und Bismarckzeit (Frankfurt a.M.: Ullstein, 1976), p.217.

28. Nancy Bermeo and Jonas Pontusson (eds), Coping with Crisis: Government Reactions to the Great Recession (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2012).

29. OECD, OECD Economic Outlook, No. 93 (Paris: OECD, 2013), p.229.

30. Ibid., p.242.

31. Cf. Alec Stone Sweet, Governing with Judges: Constitutional Politics in Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

32. Estimations according to Manfred G. Schmidt, Der deutsche Sozialstaat: Geschichte und Gegenwart (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2012), pp.32–3.

33. Cf. Wahlprogramm CDU/CSU: Gemeinsam erfolgreich für Deutschland. Regierungsprogramm 2013–2017, o.O. 2013; Wahlprogramm SPD – DAS WIR ENTSCHEIDET – Das Regierungsprogramm 2013–2017, o.O. 2013. The competition with the two smaller opposition parties was of less consequence. Alliance ’90/The Greens promoted not only a preference for a system of basic security benefits but also for extensive social benefits financed by additional increases in the social contribution rate and in taxes, thereby positioning themselves in the space – an already narrow space – between the SPD and the Left Party, cf. Zeit für den grünen Wandel. Teilhaben, einmischen, Zukunft schaffen. Bundestagswahlprogramm 2013 von BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN. The Left Party came up with an election programme that was ratified on 16 June 2013 for the 2013 Bundestag election campaign; the programme included a high degree of financially ambitious welfare state expansion – with far-reaching equalisation, high minimum wages, high minimum retirement benefits and the replacement of unemployment benefit II with high and ‘penalty-free’ minimum security systems (Wahlprogramm der Partei DIE LINKE zur Bundestagswahl 2013 beschlossen auf dem Bundestagswahlparteitag, Dresden, 14.–16. Juni 2013).

34. Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales (ed.), Lebenslagen in Deutschland: Der vierte Armuts- und Reichtumsbericht der Bundesregierung (Bonn: BMAS, 2013), pp.v, x, xxv, 35ff., 319.

35. Including during the 2013 Bundestag election. However, the competence advantage was only moderate – 35 per cent of the respondents thought the SPD was more competent, while 26 per cent thought it was the CDU/CSU. The CDU/CSU led in all of the other areas of issue competence that were surveyed. Forschungsgruppe Wahlen [FGW], Bundestagswahl: Eine Analyse der Wahl vom 22. September 2013 (Mannheim: FGW, 2013), pp.32–3.

36. Otto Kirchheimer, ‘Der Wandel des westeuropäischen Parteiensystems', Politische Vierteljahresschrift 6/1 (1965), pp.20–41.

37. Günther Bannas, ‘Mit den Ideen der anderen’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 131, 10 Jun. 2013, p.1.

38. ‘Whether collective wage agreements in the public service sector, minimum wages or retirement benefits – Angela Merkel is trying to clear away all social policy issues. She does not want to provide the SPD with any targets during the next election campaign’ – this fitting commentary appeared in the press. Der Spiegel, ‘Eine Frage der Gerechtigkeit’, No. 15 (9 Apr. 2012), pp.18–19, at p.18.

39. But also within the whole of the legislative regulation of business. The black–yellow coalition also acted cautiously here, cf. Olaf Deinert and Michael Kittner, ‘Die arbeitsrechtliche Bilanz der schwarz-gelben Koalition 2009–2013’, Recht der Arbeit: Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft und Praxis des gesamten Arbeitsrechts 66/5 (2013), pp.257–68.

40. Cf. for example FGW, Eine Analyse der Wahl vom 27. September 2009, p.47 and Renate Köcher, ‘Schwieriges Wahlkampfthema Steuern’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 139, 19 Jun. 2013, p.8.

41. D. Delhaes, H. Anger and J. Hildebrand, ‘Merkels teure Wahlparty’, Handelsblatt, No. 102/103, 31 May–2 Jun. 2013. The response of the voters was overwhelmingly positive, however: 68 per cent of respondents found the increases in family benefits good, 27 per cent rejected such increases and 5 per cent checked off ‘don't know’. Source: FGW, Politikbarometer Juni I 2013 (Mannheim: FGW, 2013), p.3.

42. Cf. FGW, Bundestagswahl. Eine Analyse der Wahl vom 27. September 2009 (Mannheim: FGW, 2013), pp.45, 48; FGW, Politikbarometer, März II 2013 (Mannheim: FGW, 2013), p.3.

43. Cf. FGW, Eine Analyse der Wahl vom 18. September 2005, p.42; FGW, Eine Analyse der Wahl vom 27. September 2009, pp.45, 48.

44. FGW, Politikbarometer, März II 2013 (Mannheim: FGW, 2013), p.3.

45. Antonia Gohr, ‘Eine Sozialstaatspartei in der Opposition: Die Sozialpolitik der SPD in den 80er Jahren’, in Manfred G. Schmidt (ed.), Wohlfahrtsstaatliche Politik: Institutionen, politischer Prozess und Leistungsprofil (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2001), pp.262–93.

46. Oliver Nüchter, Roland Bieräugel, Wolfgang Glatzer and Alfons Schmidt, Der Sozialstaat im Urteil der Bevölkerung (Opladen-Farmington Hills: Barbara Budrich, 2010).

47. See also Deinert and Kittner, ‘Die arbeitsrechtliche Bilanz’.

48. For example, social policy played no role in Angela Merkel's plans for another term as Chancellor during the 18th legislative period of the German Bundestag, according to an interview with the Chancellor. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, ‘Es wird sehr, sehr knapp’, No. 190, 17 Aug. 2013, p.3.

49. Frank Brettschneider, ‘Bundestagswahlkampf und Medienberichterstattung’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 50–51 (2005), pp.19–26; FGW, Eine Analyse der Wahl vom 18. September 2005; FGW, Eine Analyse der Wahl vom 29. September 2009.

50. FGW, Eine Analyse der Wahl vom 22. September 2013. According to the official election results, the Christian Democratic parties received 41.5 per cent of the second vote, the FDP 4.8 per cent, the SPD 25.7 per cent, the Greens 8.4 per cent, the Left Party 8.6 per cent and the remaining parties 10.9 per cent.

51. Only 4 per cent of respondents (compared to 10 per cent in 2009) in 2013 thought that the FDP was most competent in solving problems in the area of health policy, according to the data published on the eve of the elections by infratest dimap, available from http://Wahl.tagesschau.de/Wahlen/2013-09-22-BT-DE/Umfragen-kompetenz.shtml (accessed 23 Sep. 2013).