German Politics and Society

The German government’s response to the refugee crisis in the late summer and autumn of 2015 has puzzled observers. Despite initially positive reactions to Angela Merkel’s policy, her position has weakened domestically, contributing to the sudden rise of the Alternative for Germany, but also alienated a number of Germany’s European partners. While the German government’s approach may be difficult to explain from a purely rationalist perspective, this article highlights the role of ideational factors, in particular Germany’s self-understanding as an international actor and a sense of moral obligation drawn from the continued relevance of Germany’s twentieth-century history. We demonstrate that the long shadow of the crimes committed under National Socialism played a key role in shaping German public discourse on the refugee crisis—underlined by a frame analysis of the images of refugees in three leading German daily newspapers between August 2015 and March 2016. Although the inflow of refugees was also framed as a challenge and a potential security risk, the material emphasizes Germany’s moral obligation to provide shelter to those fleeing from war and persecution.

How has European visual culture supported the welcoming of refugees in Europe? This article examines the tropes of romance and family in performances at the Eurovision Song Contest and in recent European films, to ask how they encourage or limit the inclusion of asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants in the European polity. Demonstrating the long history of these tropes in colonial fantasies that imagine community on unequal gendered and racialized terms, the article asks whether queer notions of kinship and egalitarian concepts of cosmopolitanism are able to rework this colonial legacy.

The German model of labor relations is once again attracting significant attention, even if assessments of its health and economic consequences diverge. This review article clarifies debates about German labor relations and illuminates their significance for theorizing the political economy of wealthy democracies. It demonstrates how four different narratives about German practices from the late twentieth century continue to shape contemporary disagreements. While these older interpretations of the German model have been updated, their original assumptions about particular structural effects remain at the heart of current disputes, sometimes hiding as much as they reveal. This article argues that it is time to move beyond inherited abstractions and focus more on the contemporary agency of labor relations actors.

Kindleberger’s theory of hegemonic stability states that fixed exchange rate regimes require a leader that will provide it with disproportionate resources to ensure stability. Applying his theory to European monetary cooperation, we argue that, like the tools of Goethe’s “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” European Monetary Union was constructed as a “self-regulating system,” and it threatens to run amok without a hegemonic leader. Germany has exercised “soft hegemony” in Europe, providing the European Union with disproportionate resources to stabilize the single market. It has the capability to be the Eurozone’s leader. But, by 2017, blinded by its ordoliberal ideology, it refused to do so, instead placing the burden of cooperation on the weak. If Germany continues to refuse to play the role of the hegemonic leader, European Monetary Union faces collapse.

This article analyzes the Pegida movement from Germany, arguing that Pegida has to be seen as a special form of a populist right movement. Besides sharing the basic characteristics of such a movement, it also displays attributes from other forms of right-wing activism. The additional forms of right-wing activism identified as influential for Pegida were autonomous nationalism and ethnopluralism. These forms of activism contributed to the movement on different levels and their combination accounts for the special, hybrid form of Pegida. This analysis builds upon social movement theory and is based upon primary data collected in interviews with participants and from the official Facebook website of the movement.