Germany's foreign policy: France wears the breaches?!

Abstract

The German foreign policy poses contemporary political scientists a riddle since Germany’s unification in 1990. The economic strength, which the split country has built up already during the period of the cold war, would have allowed it to regain its strength in power after the fall of the wall and the reunion of Eastern and Western Germany. But there seems to be no clear line concerning the decision-making of German foreign policy under Kohl, Schröder and Merkel. However, when looking at the development of Germany’s foreign policy under its different chancellors, foreign ministers and defence ministers, a connection between their interests, the interests of their organisations and the decisions taken can be made. In this thesis the “Governmental Politics Model” introduced by Allison, which is combined with a poliheuristic model and another variable (‘non- compensatory organisational loss aversion variable’) by Klaus Brummer, is tested. Brummer used this model in an article, which analyses Germany’s participation in the EU military mission in Democratic Republic (RD) Congo in 2006. While Brummer uses mostly domestic factors to analyse the influence on the decision-making process of the German foreign policy, this thesis will in addition focus on the influence of Germany’s quasi-marriage with France and how it influences the decision-making. Furthermore, the distribution of power of decision-makers in the decision-making process will be observed and analysed. In the empirical part of this thesis, Brummer's approach is applied by focussing on military interventions outside of the EU, which are Germany’s non-participation in Libya in 2011 and its participation in Mali (MINUSMA) in 2013. After having analysed the cases, it becomes clear that an additional variable, which takes Germany’s relationship with its partner France into consideration, can help to enhance Brummer’s model and to explain the decision-making in the German foreign policy in another and eventually better way.