Reshaping politics of the left and centre in Greece after the 2014 EP election. EPIN Commentary No. 21/10 September 2014

The political landscape in Greece is confused and volatile at the moment; the right and extreme- right-wing parties are accorded a disproportionately large place in political debate, while the radical left-wing SYRIZA party is attempting to maintain a ‘leftist’ profile and demonstrate its capacity to govern through a strategy of image normalisation. These tensions make it very difficult for the Greek government to stick to the EU’s tough reform agenda. The governing coalition is trying to conceal the social effects of implementing structural policy reforms, even postponing some measures to avoid bearing their political cost. At the same time, it is adopting a very rushed, and thus quite worrying, attitude towards a fast-track growth agenda, without taking into consideration the conditions for sustainable economic development.

The Berlin Republic. Evolution of Germany's politics of memory and German patriotism. OSW Point of View, August 2009

Important changes have occurred in recent years in the attitude of a majority of the German elite towards the history of the 20th century and the political identity built on collective memory. Until recently, the sense of guilt for the crimes of the Third Reich and the obligation to remember were prevalent. While these two elements of Germany's memory of World War II are still important, currently the focus increasingly shifts to the German resistance against Nazism and the fate of the Germans who suffered in the war. Positive references to Germany's post-war history also occupy more and more space in the German memory. In 2009, i.e. the year of the 60th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany and the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism, the efforts of German public institutions concentrate on promoting a new canon of history built around the successful democratisation and Germany's post-war economic success. The purpose behind these measures is to build a common historical memory that could be shared by the eastern and western parts of Germany and appeal to Germany's immigrants, who account for a growing proportion of the society.

Germany and the Eurocrisis: The timing of politics and the politics of timing. ACES Cases No. 2014.3

This paper speculates on the future of the euro. It uses Germany as a prism for the discussion about what might be done next to bolster the Euro. Researching the future—always a challenging task—is made harder when multiple state actors contend for prominence on the basis of shifting coalitions at home, all while interacting at an international level. That said, almost everyone accepts that German choices will play the central role in the path ultimately chosen. This paper thus foregrounds Germany’s role in shaping the way ahead, and it does so through an explicitly political framework focused primarily on the electoral implausibility of an alternative German policy course.

The Malleable Politics of Welfare-to-Work Reform: Germany's "Hartz" activation compared with Dutch, British and Irish cases. ACES Cases No. 2009.1

We compare the Hartz reforms in Germany with three other major labor market activation reforms carried out by center-left governments. Britain and Germany developed radically neoliberal “mandatory” activation policies, whereas in the Netherlands and Ireland radical activation change took a very different “enabling” form. The Irish and German cases were path deviant, the British and Dutch path dependent. We explain why Germany underwent “mandatory” and path deviant activation by focusing on two features of the policy discourse. First, the elite level discourse was “ensilaged” sealing policy formation off from dissenting actors. This is what the British and German cases had in common and the result was reform that identified long term unemployment as social delinquency rather than market failure. Second, although the German policy-making system lacked the “authoritative” features that facilitated reform in the British case, and the Irish policy-making system lacked the “reflexive” mechanisms that facilitated reform in the Dutch case, in both Germany and Ireland the wider legitimating discourses were reshaped by novel institutional vehicles (the Hartz Commission and FÁS) that served to fundamentally alter system-constitutive perceptions about policy. The findings suggest that major reform of welfare-to-work policy may be much more malleable than previously thought.

The politics of the “EMU governance”. European Policy Brief No. 7, February 2012

On 6 February 2012, Yves Bertoncini participated in a conference on European economic governance organized by Egmont – Royal Institute for International Relations. This Policy Brief is based on his intervention at the conference. The author pleads for a more encompassing form of EMU governance, which should be accompanied by a clarification of its democratic dimension.

The Politics of Retrospective Justice in Germany & the Czech Republic. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 05.4, 1994

Ongoing German and Czech efforts to confront legacies of injustice in their recent pasts provides opportunity to examine policies of retrospective justice adopted from where there is no threat of old elites with residual power. Instead of evoking existing explanations of these measures that concentrate on normative issues, the role of former dissidents, or mode of transition, this account focuses on the importance of the character and structure of the political representation in post-Communist regimes in general, and in the German and Czech successor regimes in particular.

The Goldkrieg: Revaluing the Bundesbank's Reserves and the Politics of EMU. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 08.6, 1998

In May and June 1997, Germany's commitment to Economic and Monetaty Union (EMU) underwent its most serious test ever when the Bundesbank and the government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl dashed openly over the government's plans to revalue the country's gold reserves. Faced with a budget short-fall and strong political opposition to either tax increases or spending cuts, Finance Minister Waigel attempted to introduce a modest change in the Bundesbank's bookkeeping procedures to bring them in line with the standard practices at other European central banks. The Bundesbank resisted, arguing that the changes would infringe upon its closely guarded independence. This paper analyzes how the politics of coalition interacted with Germany's political institutions to cause this conflict.

The Politics of Budget Consolidation in Britain and Germany: the Impact of Blame-Avoidance Opportunities. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 05.2, 2005

According to parts of the literature, blame avoidance opportunities, i.e. the necessity and applicability of blame avoidance strategies, may differ among countries according to the respective institutional set-ups and between governing parties according to their programmatic orientation. In countries with many veto actors, a strategy of "Institutional Cooperation" among these actors is expected to diffuse blame sufficiently to render other blame avoidance strategies obsolete. In contrast, governments in Westminster democracies should resort to the more unilateral strategies of presentation, policy design and timing. At the same time, parties of the left are expected to have an easier time implementing spending cuts while right parties are less vulnerable when proposing tax increases. Evidence from the politics of budget consolidation in Britain and Germany does not corroborate these hypotheses. Instead, it seems that party competition conditions the effects institutions and the partisan complexion of governments have on the politics of blame avoidance.

The Drivers of Current Account Surplus in Germany and the Politics of Rebalancing in the Eurozone. EU Centre, Singapore Working Paper No. 24, April 2015

Current account deficits have caught the public’s attention as they have contributed to the European debt crisis. However, surpluses also constitute an issue as a deficit in any country must be financed through a surplus in another country. In 2013, Germany, now the world’s largest surplus economy, registered a record high US$273 billion surplus. This paper looks at what accounts for Germany’s surplus, revealing that the major driving factors include strong global demand for quality German exports, domestic wage restraint, an undervalued single currency, high domestic savings rate and interest rate convergence in the euro area. This paper echoes the US Treasury’s view that a persistent German surplus makes it harder for the eurozone as a whole and the southern peripheral economies in particular to recover from the current financial crisis by imposing a Europe-wide “deflationary bias” through pushing up the exchange rate of the euro, exporting feeble German inflation and projecting its ultra-tight macroeconomic policies onto crisis economies. This paper contends that Germany’s trade surplus is likely to endure as Germany and other eurozone countries uphold diverging views on the nature of the surplus engage in a blame-game amidst a sluggish rebalancing process. Prizing the surplus as a reflection of hard work and economic competitiveness, German authorities urge their southern eurozone colleagues to undertake bold structural reforms to correct the imbalance, while the hand-tied governments in crisis-stricken economies call on Germany to do its “homework” by boosting German demands for European goods and services.

Recent Changes in European Welfare State Services: A Comparison of Child Care Politics in the U.K., Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 07.6, 1997

This paper examines recent policies and politics of services, in particular child care services in European welfare states. It is argued that social (care) services are becoming an increasingly political issue in postindustrial societies and are at the very center of welfare-state restructuring. Some countries have recently developed new policy pro­ grams for child care-but there are important differences among these programs. To understand these differences as well as some common features, the paper argues that it is necessary to examine the institutional organization of child care and short-term political factors as well as the rationales articulated in political debates to support or im­ pede various policies. The paper concludes that a comprehensive system of child care provisions is still far off in most countries, despite a rhetoric of choice and postindustrial care and labor-market patterns.

DEMOCRACY AND CITIZENSHIP IN NORTH AFRICA AFTER THE ARAB AWAKENING: CHALLENGES FOR EU AND US FOREIGN POLICY (EUSPRING). Arab Citizenship Review No. 6, October 2014. EGYPT. The Return to Authoritarianism and the Crisis of Citizenship Rights

Citizenship and democratic rights have been shrinking in Egypt with the rise of president Abd El Fattah El Sisi, widely popular among Egyptians who fear more violence and unrest in an increasingly volatile region. In this EU Spring Policy Brief, Moataz El Fegiery examines the political landscape in the run-up of parliamentary elections, arguing that the short term is likely to see further curtailment of acquired rights, further crackdown on the opposition and consolidation of military power. In the longer term, however, it is in the interest of Egyptian society and institutions as well as of Europe to reverse the politics of exclusion and ensure that freedoms, pluralism and participation prevent the rise of extremism and political violence.

‘Wrong number?’ The Use and Misuse of Asylum Data in the European Union. CEPS Paper in Liberty and Security in Europe No. 69/December 2014

The Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is an EU policy area that is particularly evocative of the ‘politics of numbers’. The European Union has at its disposal a wide array of sources providing detailed information about the capacities and pressures of its member states’ asylum systems. This paper discusses the content of asylum data and the evolving interaction between its different sources, ranging from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to the European Commission’s EUROSTAT and DG HOME, the European Asylum Support Office, FRONTEX, the European Migration Network (EMN) and national databases. However, the way in which such data are often misused, or even omitted, in political debate affects the soundness of policy decisions in the CEAS. Drawing on debates over the contested phenomenon of ‘asylum shopping’ and the exemption of victims of torture and unaccompanied minors from accelerated and border procedures in the recast asylum procedures Directive, this briefing paper argues that solid data-based evidence is often absent from political negotiations on CEAS measures affecting refugees and asylum-seekers.

Economic Implications of Enlargement. Bruges European Economic Policy (BEEP) Briefing 1/2002

The Eastern enlargement is about to be decided by the European Council. As expected, the “end game “ of the negotiations and assessments is heavily biased by a narrow perspective on net transfers, on income compensations to Central European farmers and on the psychological politics of a single “big bang “. None of these three so-called key items of the end game are of much relevance to appreciate the significance of enlargement. Net transfers have little to do with the costs and benefits of club membership for countries which pay, and can lead to addiction and lethargy rather than extra growth if market integration, macro-economic stability and domestic reforms are not taken serious (as the case of Greece before 1997 has demonstrated). Income compensations for Eastern farmers are crucial for this pressure group, and symbolically of some importance in domestic politics because of the perversity that rich farmers get more, but their absence is likely to serve the public interest in candidate countries far better. And being part of the big bang, as against getting in one or three years later, has assumed a dramatic meaning during this end game, far beyond its true proportions. This hectic European theatre tends to obscure what enlargement is mainly about, now that the stability and values have been secured for the peoples from Central Europe. In a guaranteed setting of peace, freedom and security, enlargement is about greater prosperity.