The salience of foreign affairs issues in the german bundestag

Parliamentary Affairs

Volumn 62, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 418-437

  Jäger, Thomas ^a   Oppermann, Kai ^a   Höse, Alexander ^a   Viehrig, Henrike ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE   (Germany)

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EID: 67651222571     PISSN: 00312290     EISSN: 14602482     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/pa/gsp006     Document Type: Article

References (37)

1. We would like to thank the members of the 16th German Bundestag for their participation in our surveys. We are also indebted to Anne-Christine Klippstein and Dominik Wellhäuser for their assistance in conducting the surveys.
2. See S. Harnisch, Internationale Politik und Verfassung. Die Domestizierung der deutschen Sicherheits- und Europapolitik, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2006.
3. See, for example, ibid., as well as W. Ismayr, 'Bundestag' in S. Schmidt, G. Hellmann and R. Wolf (eds), Handbuch zur deutschen Auß enpolitik, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007, pp. 175-91; D. Wiefelspütz, Das Parlamentsheer. Der Einsatz bewaffneter deutscher Streitkräfte im Ausland, der konstitutive Parlamentsvorbehalt und das Parlamentsbeteiligungsgesetz, Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2005; S. Bierling, Die Außenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Normen, Akteure, Entscheidungen, 2nd edition, Oldenbourg, 2005, pp. 28-36; J. Krause, 'Die Rolle des Bundestages in der Aussenpolitik' in W. Eberwein and K. Kaiser (eds), Deutschlands neue Außenpolitik. Band 4: Institutionen und Ressourcen, Oldenbourg, 1998, pp. 137-52.
4. K. Oppermann and A. Höse, 'Die innenpolitischen Restritkionen deutscher Außenpolitik' in T. Jäger, A. Höse and K. Oppermann (eds), Deutsche Außenpolitik. Sicherheit, Wohlfahrt, Institutionen und Normen, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007, pp. 40-68.
5. See ibid. as well as Ismayr, 'Bundestag'; Bierling, Die Außenpolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pp. 28-36; Krause, 'Die Rolle des Bundestages'.
6. See Harnisch, Internationale Politik und Verfassung, pp. 298-314.
7. For example, the 9 March 2007 vote on the deployment of Tornado airplanes to Afghanistan saw more 'no' votes (157) than any vote on a Bundeswehr mission before.
8. On the two dimensions, see A. Moravcsik, 'Why the European Community Strengthens the State: International Cooperation and Domestic Politics', Working Paper Series No. 52 (2004), Cambridge, MA.
9. S.T. Fiske and S.E. Taylor, Social Cognition, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1984, pp. 11-2.
10. B.D. Jones, Reconceiving Decision-Making in Democratic Politics. Attention, Choice, and Public Policy, University of Chicago Press, 1994, p. 65.
11. H. Simon, 'Human Nature in Politics: The Dialogue of Psychology with Political Science', American Political Science Review, 79/2, 1985, 293-304; Y.I. Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds: Information Processing, Cognition, and Perception in Foreign Policy Decisionmaking, Stanford University Press, 1990, pp. 7-10.
12. A. Tversky and D. Kahneman, 'Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases', in D. Kahneman, P. Slovic and A. Tversky (eds), Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp. 3-20.
13. S.E. Taylor and S.T. Fiske, 'Salience, attention, and attribution: Top-of-the-head phenomena', in L. Berkowitz (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology: Vol. 11, Academic Press, 1978, pp. 249-88.
14. C. Wlezien, 'On the Salience of Political Issues: The Problem with ,Most Important Problem', Electoral Studies, 24/4, 2005, 555-79; G. Rabinowitz et al., 'Salience as a Factor in the Impact of Issues on Candidate Evaluation', Journal of Politics, 44/1, 1982, 41-64.
15. K. Krehbiel, Information and Legislative Organization, University of Michigan Press, 1991; W. Rudzio, Das politische System der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 7th edition, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2006.
16. We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers to whom we owe this point.
17. E.G. Carmines and J.A. Stimson, 'On the Structure and Sequence of Issue Evolution', American Political Science Review, 80/3, 1986, 901-20.
18. M. Laver and K.A. Shepsle, Making and Breaking Governments: Cabinets and Legislatures in Parliamentary Democracies, Cambridge University Press, 1996.
19. It is important to note that our surveys are not meant to establish the parliamentary salience of foreign affairs in relation to domestic policy but rather to probe into the salience of different foreign policy issues relative to each other. Thereby, we obtained nuanced findings on the relative salience of specific issues within the realm of foreign affairs, which we contend are best suited to infer the extent to which the Bundestag can control the government's policies on these issues from case to case. Our research design, however, is not to deny that domestic issues, such as unemployment or the state of the economy, will often take priority over foreign policy issues on many parliamentarians' lists of concerns. For data on the salience of different domestic and foreign policy issues to political parties see H.-D. Klingemann, A. Volkens, J.L. Bara, I. Budge and M.D. McDonald (eds), Mapping Policy Preferences II: Estimates for Parties, Electors, and Governments in Eastern Europe, European Union, and OECD 1990-2003, Oxford University Press, 2006.
20. Salience data may also be generated through techniques such as observation, content analyses, interviews and focus group discussions. However, these techniques are rather costly and time-consuming. A web survey would have been even cheaper and faster than a mail survey but less promising with regard to the response rates. See M. Kaplowitz, T. Hadlock and R. Levine, 'A Comparison of Web and Mail Survey Response Rates', Public Opinion Quarterly, 68/1, 2004, 94-101.
21. Wlezien, 'On the Salience of Political Issues', 555-79.
22. Strictly speaking, this kind of weighting is only one of several possible operationalisations of the respondents' hierarchical list of Germany's three most important bilateral relations. However, we contend that our weighting constitutes a plausible approximation to the data which is in line with the wording of question B.
23. Although that notion is sometimes disputed, we hold that the EU is, in fact, an international organisation, albeit one which is highly institutionalised, in which member states have pooled parts of their sovereignty, and which thus exhibits some supranational elements. See A. Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe. Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht, Routledge, 1998, pp. 18-35.
24. J. Howorth, Security and Defence Policy in the European Union, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
25. R. Bell, 'NATO's Transformation Scorecard', NATO Review (Spring 2005); P. Gallis, NATO and Energy Security, CRS Report for Congress, Congressional Research Service, Washington, D.C., 21 March 2006.
26. To be precise, there are six different parties represented in the Bundestag. However, the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union form a parliamentary grouping (Fraktionsgemeinschaft) so they are to be treated as one parliamentary party.
27. Strictly speaking, 20% of entries are not necessarily exactly the same as 20% of respondents naming an issue because some respondents may have chosen to name less than three issues. However, since almost all respondents did, in fact, name three separate issues, we chose to equate the two quantities in order to enhance the readability of the text and the accessibility of the data.
28. See Angela Merkel's speeches at the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2007 and in the Knesset on 18 March 2008, when she was the first ever head of government to address the Israeli parliament (until then, the right was reserved only for heads of state). It seems, however, that Germany is more important to Israel than vice versa. While Germany is 'Israel's second-best friend' after the United States (The Economist, 19 March 2008), Israel ranks only seventh when it comes to the Bundestag member's judgement on Germany's most important bilateral relationships.
29. A. Weinlein, 'Der Nato bleiben maximal 24 Monate: Bundestag beschließt Entsendung von Tornados nach Afghanistan', Das Parlament, 12 March 2007, p. 1.
30. A.E. Töller, 'Mythen und Methode. Zur Messung der Europäisierung der Gesetzgebung des Deutschen Bundestages jenseits des 80-Prozent-Mythos', Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen, 1, 2008, 3-17.
31. K. Auel, 'The Europeanisation of the German Bundestag: Institutional Change and Informal Adaptation', German Politics, 15/3, 2006, 249-68.
32. In Germany, holding a referendum was out of the question because the German constitution prohibits public referenda on a national level. The Bundestag ratified the revised Treaty on 24 April 2008.
33. See S. Koschut, 'Germany and the USA in the "War against Terror": Is Extraordinary Rendition Putting Transatlantic Cooperation under Strain?', Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft, 3, 2007, 36-52.
34. See W. Besson, Die Außenpolitik der Bundesrepublik. Erfahrungen und Maßstäbe, Piper, 1970.
35. This debate is rehearsed in W.F. Hanrieder, Germany, America, Europe: Forty Years of German Foreign Policy, Yale University Press, 1989. The Atlanticists' case is made, for example, in H.-P. Schwarz, 'Amerika ist unentbehrlich: Plädoyer für ein atlantisches Deutschland', in Jäger, Hö se and Oppermann, Deutsche Außenpolitik, 569-84. For the opposite view see W. Link, 'Europa ist unentbehrlich: Plä doyer für ein europäisches Deutschland' ibid., 585-95.
36. Data from a survey of TNS Infratest on behalf of Der Spiegel, 19-21 July 2005. Regrettably, there are no other suitable data on public opinion that would have offered themselves as a comparative angle for our research.
37. Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition, 1984.