In this session, Julian L. Garritzmann, Professor of Political Science (Goethe University Frankfurt) and Katrijn Siderius, Doctoral Researcher (Goethe University Frankfurt) present on the ministries (of finance) and the politics of (social) policy-making.
Has Angela Merkel drafted a single policy herself during her 16 years as Chancellor? Probably not. While her governments designed and implemented many reforms, the concrete policies were certainly all written by ministerial bureaucrats. Nonetheless, ministries and ministerial bureaucrats are not regarded as important actors in political science. Public administration researchers, in contrast, study bureaucracies, but neglect ministries’ substantive, distributional impacts on policy-making.
We combine and expand both perspectives, studying the substantive role and effects of ministries on policy-making. The talk consists of two parts. First, we develop a theory explaining why individual ministries crucially shape policies’ content, particularly their distributive profiles. We illustrate this using the least likely case of Germany: Our novel content-coded data on all social policies in the Bundestag since 1969 shows that ministries shape policies' distributive profiles, even when controlling for rival explanations such as party politics. This has important implications for representation and democratic policy-making.
Second, we sketch a research project on the role of Ministries of Finance for social policy-making. We theorize why MoFs are an increasingly important – but scholarly neglected – actor and propose a framework to empirically explore the mechanisms through which MoFs affect policies. We systematically study MoFs’ policy impact across countries, policy areas, and time, thereby expanding welfare state research, political economy, public policy, and public administration research. We employ a multi-method design, systematically collecting information on the characteristics and powers of MoFs, conducting an expert survey on MoFs, and studying MoFs' role in social policy-making in comparative case studies.
Discussant: Johannes Karremans, Postdoctoral researcher, EUI
About the speakers:
Julian L. Garritzmann is a Professor of Political Science at Goethe University Frankfurt. His research lies at the intersection of comparative political economy, public policy, and political sociology. Most of his recent work focuses on welfare state research, education and social investment policy, global social policy, party politics, and public opinion. More recently he is also stretching out to public administration research. He holds a PhD from the University of Konstanz. Before joining Frankfurt, he was Senior Researcher at the University of Zurich, Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, Duke University, and at Rutgers, as well as a Max Weber Fellow at the EUI, Florence.
Katrijn Siderius is a PhD candidate at the Goethe University Frankfurt. She works within the working group of Prof. Dr. Garritzmann and participates amongst others in the project 'Ministries of Finance and the Politics of Welfare State Reform'. Before joining the Institute of Political Science at the Goethe University, Katrijn was a policy advisor at the Nederlandsche Bank, the central bank and financial supervisor of the Netherlands, where she worked in the area of banking supervision and central bank risk management. Katrijn graduated in 2018 as MA of Political Science and Public Administration from the University of Konstanz (double degree with Utrecht University), with a focus on Political Economy, European Union governance and methods. Her research interests include the political economy of the transition to a sustainable economy, the politics of (public) finance and the influence of non-political actors, especially technocrats, on public policy.
Hybrid event. The link to the session will be provided following registration.