Introduction

The weakness of the (West) German ‘semisovereign state’ that Peter Katzenstein diagnosed in his book in 1987 was, according to his argument, not as insurmountable a disadvantage as one might have assumed. Quite the contrary: the profile of policy outcomes seemed to suggest that not having an almighty state could actually be an advantage. But the reason for these positive outcomes was not the state's weakness alone; it was the peculiar combination of a ‘decentralised state’ with a ‘centralised society’ that proved advantageous. It also helped to explain the central puzzle that West Germany presented when compared with similar cases of highly industrialised liberal democracies, namely the tendency towards only incremental policy change and the high degree of policy stability even after changes of government (Katzenstein 1987, pp. 4, 35).

Katzenstein argues that the ‘decentralised state’ and the ‘centralised society’ interact primarily through three ‘nodes’ in the policy network, namely political parties, co-operative federalism and parapublic institutions. In this chapter, the focus will be on the latter – and the question whether (and if so, how) their function in the German political system has changed. For the period since Katzenstein developed his hypotheses about (West) German politics in the mid-1980s has seen momentous changes in the history of the country. Above all German unification, but also further steps in European integration, certainly make it worthwhile to ask how far these developments have affected the ‘parapublic institutions’ that Katzenstein has portrayed as a vital ingredient of German politics.