Routledge Imbalance: Germany’s Political Economy after the Social Democratic Century

Germany is a central case for research on comparative political economy, which has inspired theorizing on national differences and historical trajectories. This book assesses Germany’s political economy after the end of the "social democratic" 20th century to rethink its dominant properties and create new opportunities for using the country as a powerful lens into the evolution of democratic capitalism. Documenting large-scale changes and new tensions in the welfare state, company strategies, interest intermediation, and macroeconomic governance, the volume makes the case for analysing contemporary Germany through the politics of imbalance rather than the long-standing paradigm of institutional stability. This conceptual reorientation around inequalities and disparities provides much-needed traction for clarifying the causal dynamics that govern ongoing processes of institutional recomposition. Delving into the politics of imbalance, the volume explicates the systemic properties of capitalism, multivalent policy feedback, and the organizational foundations of creative adjustment as key vantage points for understanding new forms of distributional conflict within and beyond Germany. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of German Politics. Review "Germany, or better: West Germany, used to be an ideal place to explore the benefits of functional complementarity in political-economic institutions. This is long gone. The editors of this exciting collection have rightly chosen ‘imbalance’ as the guiding concept for an excellent suite of articles on the German political economy today. What happened to Germany’s much-admired institutional coherence, to its institutional stability, viewed successively as advantage and disadvantage? How did German institutions contribute to the country’s rise to hegemony in the European Union, and what are the longer-term prospects of the German social model under the euro? The articles in this book take readers to the very front of research on these and similar issues." Wolfgang Streeck, Emeritus Director, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies "At a moment of upheaval in advanced capitalism, this book represents a sophisticated scholarly re-examination of Germany, long viewed as a paragon of capitalist success. With contributions by some of the most accomplished scholars of German politics and comparative political economy, it demolishes the tired stereotypes of German political consensus and institutional stability and demonstrates that the German model has long evinced a deep and abiding capacity for institutional dynamism. The book is an absolute must-read for anyone wishing to understand contemporary Germany or the broader challenges faced by contemporary capitalist societies in a time of crisis and uncertainty." Mark I. Vail, Worrell Chair of Politics and International Affairs, Wake Forest University "Schulze-Cleven and Rothstein have assembled a group of first-rate scholars with extraordinarily deep expertise in the current political economic situation in Germany. Plagued by problems of technological change, inequality, the assimilation of immigrants, the challenges of climate change, and the growth of right-wing populism, Germany is finding that many of the institutional mechanisms that it had relied on for stability have proven weak and ineffective. There is great uncertainty regarding how things will play out. Conflict is distressing, but the range of experiments around reform discussed in this volume is exciting. The scholars in this volume not only provide an excellent diagnosis of current German difficulties; they also provide a modicum of hope for the future. This should be a go-to book for anyone interested in the latest developments on the German political economic scene." Gary Herrigel, Paul Klapper Professor in the College and Division of Social Sciences, Department of Political Science,