Rapide Politikwechsel in der Bundesrepublik

For a long time scholars considered the Federal Republic of Germany to be a textbook example of institutionalized stagnation. Germany’s agonizing number of institutional and partisan veto players, its federal structure leading into the joint decision-making trap, as well as strong and highly organized interest groups set narrow limits to the ability to reform. Under these circumstances policy change – if any – only takes place in incremental and insufficient steps. However, the last decade saw far-reaching, even radical and swiftly implemented policy changes in a number of policy fields. What are the reasons and contextual conditions leading to rapid policy change? This volume is the first to offer a theoretical framework to analyze rapid policy changes. It comprises empirical evidence from a variety of case studies conducted in different policy fields: the German turn-around in energy policy (“Energiewende”) following the Fukushima disaster in 2011, far-reaching labor-market reforms under the Red-Green coalition government from 2003 to 2005, the radical amendment of the drug price regulation in the health care system, the suspension of compulsory military service, the establishment of a (fiscal) stability council as well as other examples of radical shifts in labor migration and family policies.