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Although the legitimacy of an economic system is often dependent on citizen support, psychological research has paid little attention to attitudes toward economic systems. In the present study, we examined the link between two system-justifying ideologies, namely, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO), and attitudes toward the social market economy in Germany. Drawing on system justification theory, we hypothesized that RWA would be positively and SDO negatively associated with support for the social market economy because the social component of the German economic system conflicts with beliefs inherent in SDO favoring a group-based hierarchy. Based on a quota sample of German adults (N = 886), we found support for the predicted associations of both system-justifying ideologies with economic system support, except that RWA was negatively associated with support for the welfare component of the social market economy. However, the positive relationship of RWA with support for the social market economy only emerged after SDO was statistically controlled, suggesting a suppressor situation. These findings demonstrate that system-justifying ideologies bear different relations to pro-market attitudes depending on the type of economic regime. Implications for system justification theory are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article investigates how neoliberal globalization has been mediated through audiovisual narratives since the 2000s. It identifies a cluster of films, produced by and circulating on German public television, which use the generic conventions of the popular crime genre to constitute a sub-genre—the televisual economic crime drama. Using a content and textual analysis that focuses on the backdrop of historical context and genre norms, the article examines key tropes to assess the critical potential of this sub-genre. The analysis demonstrates that both the containment theme of "a few bad apples" and a systemic critique can structure these narratives of neoliberalism. At its best, the televisual economic crime drama argues that alternatives to neoliberalism are possible by referencing Germany's history of the social market economy and by featuring characters as well as images of active citizenship, solidarity, and collective action in the workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The post-war economic policy of West Germany (FRG) is largely associated with the so-called economic miracle (German: Wirtschaftswunder) and therefore its causes are the subject of many different analyzes. They include the correlation between the rate of economic growth in Germany and the development and transport potential of transport, including rail and road-car transport. This position prompted the author to try to search for long-term interdependencies and thus verify the thesis using the analysis of time series (1950–1989) available for West Germany and using original econometric methods in this field, e.g. unit root test to determine the stationarity and the Engle-Granger cointegration test. In addition to the introduction, the article consists of three parts and conclusions. The broadest one includes the description of the assumptions and stages of the research procedure and its results, both on the empirical and methodological level. It is based on synthetic theoretical foundations presented on the basis of a review of international literature on the subject and review of the essence of the German economic miracle and the main trends in changes in the field of economic growth and transport development in Germany after World War II. The research presented in this way fits into the principles of the new economic history paradigm, which is still not very popular in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nachdem die Soziale Markwirtschaft jahrzehntelang als selbstverständliche Wirtschaftsordnung in Deutschland akzeptiert wurde, wird sie in jüngerer Zeit zunehmend in Frage gestellt. Interventionistische und planwirtschaftliche Eingriffe nehmen zu, vor allem im Wohnungsmarkt, im Arbeitsmarkt und in der Energie- und Umweltpolitik. Das deutsche Grundgesetz bietet keinen Schutz vor solchen Tendenzen, denn es lässt die Frage der Wirtschaftsordnung prinzipiell offen und erlaubt in Artikel 15 sogar ausdrücklich die Vergesellschaftung von Boden und Produktionsmitteln. Eine Gruppe von mehr als 50 Ökonomen setzt sich deshalb dafür ein, diesen Passus zu streichen und stattdessen die Soziale Marktwirtschaft in der Verfassung explizit zu verankern. Der Beitrag diskutiert die Pro- und Contra-Argumente für diesen Vorschlag aus ökonomischer und juristischer Sicht. Er kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass eine Einfügung der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft in das Grundgesetz analog zu den Europäischen Verträgen sowohl sinnvoll als auch notwendig wäre. While the Social Market Economy was generally accepted as the German economic constitution for decades, it is more and more challenged in recent times. Both intervening and economically controlling interventions are constantly on the rise, in particular in housing, in the labour market, and concerning energy and environment policy. The German basic law does not provide protection against such tendencies, because it is not specific about the economic constitution and even allows socialisation of both land and means of production in article 15. For these reasons, a group of more than 50 economists stands up for an explicit anchoring of the social market economy in the constitution. The paper discusses the pros and cons of this proposal from both the economic and the legal side. The final conclusion is that, analogously to the European treaties, the social market economy should indeed be included in the basic law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, a new economic doctrine called ordoliberalism was born in Germany. The foundations of this doctrine were values such as responsibility, solidarity, justice, and freedom. Classics of ordoliberalism formulated a number of recommendations and requirements for businesses in their writings. One of them was the public responsibility, which had the private-economic and socio-economic nature. In Germany sports’ (football) enterprises functioning in the form of companies and associations are participants in the sports-economic competition in the two professional leagues (1.Bundesliga and 2.Bundesliga). At the same time sports enterprises pursue different aims: among the economic goals, there are also the social goals. In the structures of sports enterprises, there are several departments dealing with CSR and implementation of partnership projects. The article concludes that 1) the constitutive elements of ordoliberalism had an influence on the functioning of sports (football) enterprises in Germany, 2) the projects realized under the social responsibility rule that were undertaken by sports companies were strongly related to sports education, environmental protection, and social exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the development of industrial relations (IR) in Germany since the end of the Second World War and discusses the current challenges posed by economic globalisation und European integration.Design/methodology/approach Combining a political economy, identifying Germany as a coordinated market economy (social market economy), and actor-centred historical institutionalism approach, outlining the formation and strategies of the main social actors within a particular institutional setting, the paper draws on the broad range of research on IR in Germany and its theoretical debates, including own research in the field.Findings The legacy of the key institutional settings in the post-war era – primarily the social market economy, co-determination at supervisory boards, works councils and sector-based non-ideological unions with their analogously organised employer counterparts, as well as the dual system of interest representation – has shaped the German IR and still underlie the bargaining processes and joint learning processes although trade unions and employers’ associations have been weakened because of loss of membership. In consequence the coverage scope of collective agreements is now somewhat reduced. Despite being declared dead many times, the “German model” of a “conflictual partnership” of capital and labour has survived many turbulent changes affecting it to the core.Originality/value The paper presents an original, theoretical informed reconstruction of the German IR and allows an understanding of the current institutional changes and challenges in the light of historical legacies. Additionally the theoretical debates on path dependence and learning processes of collectivities are enriched through its application to the German case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the German federal elections on September 22, 2013, for the first time after 64 years, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) was not elected to the German federal parliament, the Bundestag, anymore. Less surprising than this fact is the malice of its political opponents with which this landslide defeat was accompanied. In this paper, it is argued that the hostility towards the Free Democrats originates from its turn to the Christian Democrats in 1982 with the so called Manifesto for the Market Economy written by Otto Graf Lambsdorff, then Federal Minister of the Economy. The Manifesto argued for a consolidation of public finance and tax reductions, for reforms in the labor market and the social security systems, and for a liberalization and privatization policy. While the Free Democrats did not achieve much of that agenda during the coalition with the Christian Democrats, it influenced the Agenda 2010 by Chancellor Schröder. The paper concludes with a proposal for a renewal of supply side policies in Germany and a renewal of the reform agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal for Business, Economics & Ethics / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts und Unternehmensethik is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Ordoliberalism is the theory behind the German social market economy. Its theoretical stance developed in the context of the economic crisis and political turmoil of the Weimar Republic in the late 1920s. It is premised on the strong state as the locus of liberal governance, and holds that economic freedom derives from political authority. In the context of the crisis of neoliberal political economy and austerity, and debates about the resurgence of the state vis-à-vis the economy, the article introduces the ordoliberal argument that the free economy presupposes the exercise of strong state authority, and that economic liberty is a practice of liberal governance. This practice is fundamentally one of social policy to secure the sociological and ethical preconditions of free markets. The study of ordoliberalism brings to the fore a tradition of a state-centric neoliberalism, one that says that economic freedom is ordered freedom, one that argues that the strong state is the political form of free markets, and one that conceives of competition and enterprise as a political task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal for Business, Economics & Ethics / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts und Unternehmensethik is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Perhaps two generations after the modest beginning, the FRG's successes and failures have become amenable to a more balanced evaluation. From the vantage point of the "Berlin Republic," the key question has shifted from whether the second German democracy would survive at all, to the reasons for its relatively positive course and to the extent of its lingering problems. This chapter first delves into the emergence of popular myths that characterized the Federal Republic's difficult search for identity. Secondly, it takes a look at some of the West's actual accomplishments in problem-solving, because such a comparison helps explain the eventual collapse of the East. Finally, it scrutinizes several of the competing explanations so as to reveal their political agendas and discuss their analytical limitations. Instead of presenting a simple success story, this reflection therefore strives for a critical appreciation. The paper concludes that at sixty, the FRG has entered a comfortable middle age, leaving be hind some of its earlier drama, but exuding a sense of competent normalcy. The mythical challenges of postwar reconstruction and recovery of international respectability have receded, followed instead by everyday concerns that are much less exhilarating. There are still plenty of problems, ranging from an aging population to a lack of full-day childcare, but they are shared by other advanced industrial societies. Moreover, after a century of first arrogant and then dejected difference, the German Sonderweg has finally come to an end. As a result of the meltdown of the Anglo-American version of unrestrained capitalism, the German model of a socially responsive market economy has even regained some of its prior luster. Hence, the postwar record of cautious incrementalism inspires some confidence that the Germans will also manage to meet the unforeseen political and economic challenges of the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Personalforschung is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Will the welfare state survive European Integration? The paper seeks to put this currently intense debate into constitutional perspectives. It starts with a reconstruction of the débat fondateur in post-war Germany on the new Basic Law, which was focused on alleged or real tensions of welfarism with Rechtsstaatlichkeit, the commitment to rule of law. This is the background for the discussion in Section II on legal categories, which Fritz Scharpf has characterised as a de-coupling of economic integration from the various welfare traditions of Member States. The third section analyses the ECJ's recent labour law jurisprudence with its interpretation of the supremacy of European freedoms and its rigid interpretation of pertinent secondary legislation. These controversial moves are bound to provoke fierce opposition on the part of the protagonists of “Social Europe.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Germany is considered to be a pioneer of social security systems; nonetheless, globalization and demographic changes have put enormous pressure on them. A solution is not yet in sight as the debate on the future of the German social security systems still lacks consensus. We argue that ideas matter and that the debate can benefit from a deeper reflection on the concept of social security. This objective is pursued along two lines. First, we take a historical perspective and reconstruct the development of Germany’s social security systems. Second, we scrutinize from a theoretical perspective how social security is conceptualized in public and theoretical debates. Behind the various positions, we identify four basic ideal types. We then analyze how these ideal types account for the benefits of social security systems and what role they assign to corporations in providing social security. While two ultimately reinforce potential conflicts between different groups in society, the other two ideal types reveal possible benefits for all. The last ideal type actually conceptualizes social security systems as insurance that fosters risky but overall productive investments in human and other forms of capital. Therefore, it can be shown that social security systems are not necessarily threatened by globalization and that incentives exist for corporations to invest in the provision of social security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates various possible meanings of ‘Social Market Economy’—60 years after its political initiation in Germany. We focus on the variety of intellectual sources that influenced the formation and interpretation of the concept in Germany during the first half of the last century. Our particular attention is on Müller-Armack’s definition of a rather dualistic concept of ‘social’ versus ‘market economy’ and the subtle differences it has with an original (Freiburg School) view of ordo-liberalism that lends itself more easily to a constitutional economics perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economics and economic history have a fundamental role to play in our understanding of Cold War Germany. Yet, it is still difficult to establish concrete links between economic phenomena and the most important questions facing post 1945 historians. Obviously, one may evaluate West Germany's “economic miracle,” the success of western European integration, or the end of communism in 1989 from a purely economic point of view. To achieve a deeper understanding of Cold War Germany, however, one must evaluate whether the social market economy represented an adequate response to Nazism, if memory and perspective provided the decisive impulse for European integration, or if the Cold War ended in Europe because of changes in western nuclear strategy. Economic history operates in relation to politics, culture, and historical memory. The parameters for economic action are often as determined by the given political culture of the moment, as they are by the feasibility of alternative economic philosophies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Langage & Societe is the property of Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose — This paper suggests that an adequate understanding of the notion of the social market economy, which has become a prominent aspect of debates on the social model of the European Constitution, is to be assessed in the context of the historist tradition in German economic and social thought Design/methodology/approach — The paper explores the intellectual history of the notion of the social market economy and its conceptual relevance for a dynamic European social model by highlighting Alfred Müller-Armack's contributions to ordoliberalism and their relationship with German historism, in particular with Gustav von Schmoller's approach to Socialpolitik. Findings — The paper finds that the decisive concern of the notion of the social market economy is the reconciliation of economic dynamism and social cohesion in a basic setting of legal rules and cultural values, reaching beyond common interpretations that focus more narrowly on institutional aspects of social policy. Practical implications — By highlighting the interplay of economic, social and cultural dimensions, the paper suggests an extension of the conceptual horizon of current debates on the social model of the European Union, promoting policy implications that account for the possibilities of balancing conflicting social interests in the process of integration. Originality/value — The paper applies a reconstruction of the intellectual history of the notion of the social market economy to the problem of designing a social order for the European Union with its underlying discourse on the constitutional status of a European social market economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The German economy, once the powerhouse in Europe, is stalling. Unemployment has ratcheted upward since 1970, the social security systems can no longer be financed (even if the population were not ageing) and with an average annual GDP growth rate of 1.2 per cent since 1995, the economy almost stagnates. This paper analyses and suggests solutions to Germany’s three main challenges. To undo the adverse incentives with respect to unemployment, the institutional design for wage formation should be decentralized, the reservation wage adjusted and the tax on labour reduced. To make the social security systems sustainable, the level of social absorption has to be lowered. And, finally, to achieve a more dynamic economy, new stimuli for growth have to be unleashed, including human capital formation and innovation, which are vital for the knowledge society. The role of government has to be rethought and the German social market economy redefined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Equity and efficiency are usually regarded as the main objectives of tax policy. Commenting on Dr. Reginald Hansen's doctoral dissertation, the author analyses the meaning of the equity-efficiency trade-off framework in the context of the ongoing debate regarding the reform of the German income-tax system. Schmoller's and Wagner's contrasting conceptions of income taxation are discussed. The role of the tax law as an instrument of interventionism within the framework of the 'social market economy', especially through the use of tax incentives, is highlighted. Contrary to Dr. Hansen, the author adopts an 'Austrian' viewpoint and argues that both the (catallactic) efficiency and equity of tax incentives are disputable, especially but not uniquely through their (ab)use in tax shelter constructions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]