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uncertainty’ in the policy chain, the necessity to form a parliamentary majority with the SAP
and the challenged party discipline of the SAP
Germany
The German welfare state is not only a paradigmatic example for a ‘conservative’ (Esping-
Andersen 1999) or Christian-Democratic welfare state. Because of the federal constitution,
the passage of legislation is in times of ‘divided government’, i.e. in times of different
partisan majorities in Bundestag and Bundesrat, particulary cumbersome. In fact, this
institutional design and the centripetal party competition with two major Volksparteien which
are always in government either on the federal or the Länder level, are made responsible for
‘Reformstau’ and the declining performance of the German model (for an overview cf.
Kitschelt/Streeck 2003, Wiesenthal 2002). A diagnosis that Fritz W. Scharpf already pointed
out more than twenty years ago as the danger of a ‘joint-decision trap’ (Scharpf 1988
)
.
Indeed, the German situation may be characterized by a specific problem overload that does
not only have its roots in economic changes but also in the historically special case of German
unification. As in the other case studies, I will not provide an overall review of the legislative
output in the German welfare state since the early 1980s (cf. Jochem 1999), but concentrate
on one single reform: the pension reform of 2001 (with some further comments on the current
ongoing attempts to reform health insurance).
The veto player approach does inform us about the number of partisan veto players
(traditionally two parties in coalition, hence two partisan veto players) and the interference of
a third veto player, the Bundesrat, which may become crucial in times of ‘divided
government’. Judging only by the number of veto players, policy change should be easier in
Germany even under the conditions of ‘divided government’ than for example in Sweden in
the early 1990s. And if we look at the number of legislative changes, in fact legislative
change in the German welfare state did occur rather often (Jochem 1999), however, the
German malaise of low employment growth and overburdened social security schemes could
not be cured effectively.
The prospect of breaking the ‘Reformstau’ was connected with the end of the Kohl era and
the first red-green government in German history. In fact, the new government not only
Convention