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The Bureaucratic Politics Model (BPM) is usually employed to explain crisis decision-making in US foreign policy. Proponents of the model argue, however, that its explanatory scope also encompasses non-crisis decision-making in domestic political issues in parliamentary systems. This paper takes up this claim and applies the BPM to the reform of the German Federal Criminal Police Office. In line with the BPM's predictions, the paper finds that the policy preferences of the key actors were indeed strongly influenced by their bureaucratic position and the outcome of the decision-making process was a compromise solution. However, the model cannot account for the impact of two non-executive institutions, that is, the Federal Constitutional Court and the Bundesrat, on the executive bargaining process. This finding suggests that the BPM could be an even better analytical tool if it were expanded to systematically incorporate the influence of non-bureaucratic actors into its framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two events have fundamentally altered the trajectory of the post-war German-American relationship into the twenty-first century: the American response to the existential challenge posed to open societies by those aligned with the purposes and methods of al-Qaeda and the Taliban; and the destabilisation of the global economy initiated with the collapse of the international financial system in 2008 conjoined to the largely uncoordinated national policy responses to the ensuing global recession that bears realistic comparison with the twentieth century's Great Depression. Both episodes illustrate Germany's relative decline as a key partner on many issues at the top of the American foreign policy agenda and may be traced to the changed strategic context of the transatlantic area, the rising strategic and economic importance of China for the United States, and Germany's continuing inability and unwillingness to assume a proportionately robust and responsible role towards meeting the challenges posed by growing global disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the erosion of the conditions which supported Germany's emergence as a ‘Civilian Power’, in particular fundamental changes in the US perspective on the transatlantic relationship and international security, but also the increased sensitivity of German foreign policy to domestic circumstances. It explores Germany's so far ambivalent and inconsistent role in the pursuit of a post-hegemonic order for Euro-Atlantic security, focusing in particular on the emerging European Security and Defence Policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]