Suchergebnisse

""1. Politico-economic interdependence""""2. The relationship between political and economic variables""; ""3. �Electoral cycles� and macro-economic policy""; ""4. The difficulty of corroborating the existence of �electoral cycles�""; ""4.1 Various countries""; ""4.2 The German case""; ""5. �Popularity cycles� and macro-economic policy""; ""6. Critique of �electoral and popularity cycle� models""; ""V. Analytical design""; ""A. The rational choice approach to the study of resource allocation""

Abstract. This paper is concerned with the two underlying dimensions of the people's welfare – economic growth and social protection – and their realization in the diverse processes which determine the character of budgeting and of budgetary outcomes. These conflicting conceptions of welfare and the diverse agents involved in the budgetary process generate a government fiscal policy, which expresses the clash between ideology and political feasibility and between politicians' intentions and actual outcomes. This paper focuses primarily on the budgetary process in West Germany, but also makes some reference to fiscal policy in the UK and the USA.

Abstract. The 'cyclical' effect covered in this paper deals with the development of public expenditure in West Germany in combination with the timing of elections. The underlying hypotheses on the cyclical development of certain expenditures are based on the 'New Political Economy' literature. This approach is then contrasted with the theory of budgetary incrementalism, an alternative mode of explanation of public sector growth. The data are tested to see whether a cyclical or linear model is more appropriate for describing public expenditure developments.

Digitised version produced by the EUI Library and made available online in Open Access in 2021 for research or private study purposes ; The 1986 pre-election year in the Federal Republic of Germany was an interesting one. Starting with the communal elections in Schleswig-Holstein in March, the parties began to prepare themselves for the big upcoming event - the general election in January 1987. The governing Christian Democrats (CDU) suffered a severe vote loss in this March election as part of their most loyal supporters - the farmers - decided to abstain due to a general dissatisfaction with EEC regulations and agricultural government policies. In order to avoid further farmers' boycotts for the next 'Lander'-elections in Lower Saxony in June, Bavaria in October and Hamburg in November, the federal government sprang into action. A 500 million DM programme was passed in the beginning of June, which reduced the farmers' contributions to the agrarian social security system with retrospective effect to January 1986. As a result of the reactor accident in Tschernobyl another 500 million DM were promised to cover the losses of agricultural products because of radio activity. In order to appease the farmers even more, a special election gift of 100 million DM to subsidize fallow land was given to Lower Saxony's farmers one week before the election took place. At the same time the parliament increased veterans' benefits by 2,15% from July onwards, further increases being promised by January 1987. The predominant social policy issue, however, concerned old age pensions, more precisely, the question of adopting a so-called 'baby year' in pension law. The coalition government in Bonn decided to give all women born before 1921 a monthly payment of 25 DM for each child. The programme will start in October 1987 and will gradually include all female pensioners with children by 1990. Described by Chancellor Kohl as a new dimension in social policy, the programme will cost 3,3 billion DM per year by 1990. ; Published version of EUI PhD thesis, 1985