by Hiltrud Naßmacher and Karl-Heinz Naßmacher

Policy processes can be analysed more precisely with the help of policy field analysis. Using the example of the legislative process on party financing in 1992/93, it is shown how the interaction of actors in networks and arenas resulted in a law that both satisfies the parties' need for money within the guidelines of the Federal Constitutional Court and can stand up to criticism from the public.

Normally, everything is quite simple. As soon as there is a social need for a change in the law, the federal government makes a proposal. The Bundestag discusses, amends and passes this government bill. The Bundesrat approves it, the Federal Chancellor, the responsible Federal Minister and the Federal President sign it. The new law is published in the Federal Law Gazette and a political problem is solved.

One of the first insights of political science is that the social need for a law is by no means objectively ascertainable. From a scientific point of view, problems do not simply exist; they first have to be defined. We know from early contributions to the then still young subject that the interested sections of society not only have a massive influence on the definition of a political problem, but also on the content of a law and the legislative process (influence of associations). After all, it turned out that nothing is solved in the long term; most problems are only dealt with and thus temporarily "pacified".

Party funding is also a recurring problem. The most recent law on this, or (correctly labelled) the "Sixth Act amending the Political Parties Act and other laws" (Federal Law Gazette I No. 5/1994), is the subject of this paper.

On 9 April 1992, the Federal Constitutional Court declared important parts of the "Act on Political Parties" in the version of 3 March 1989 to be unconstitutional. On 24 June 1992, Federal President von Weizsäcker appointed a commission of independent experts. The commission presented its proposals for a constitutional reorganisation of party funding to the Federal Press Conference on 17 February 1993 (Bundestag printed paper 12/4425).

On 1 October 1993, the parliamentary groups of the parties permanently represented in the Bundestag (CDU/CSU, SPD, F.D.P.) introduced a bill, which the Bundestag passed by a large majority in the third reading on 12 November 1993. The Bundesrat approved the bill on 17 December 1993. Part of the law came into force on 10 April 1992, the remaining provisions on 1 January 1994.

The outward course of the legislative procedure, from its initiation through the stages of extra-parliamentary preparation and parliamentary deliberation, does not yet indicate any special features. The fact that the amendment to the law emerged as a consequence of an old policy is also nothing special. Neither would be an occasion to present an example of a current field of research in political science, namely policy field analysis.

What is unusual is the coincidental proximity of scientific observers to the ongoing process. Expressed in the technical language of empirical social research and policy field analysis, this means From participant observation, the authors are familiar with communication contexts (networks) as well as discussions on various political stages (arenas). This means that not only the "responsible" authorities according to the constitution can be named. The options for action of the informally integrated private and public actors are also included. Politics never takes place only in one arena, on one stage. A political result has only ever been achieved when the actors operating in the individual arenas have sorted out and reorganised the possible alternative courses of action. In the end, exactly one proposal remains that is capable of winning a majority or consensus.

Public and confidential actions can be observed in the legislation on party funding (as in other legislative procedures). Based on the concept of the "political stage", the revolving stage familiar from modern theatres provides a particularly vivid image. The front part of a revolving stage faces the auditorium, where actors act in the public eye. At the same time, the stage set for the next act is prepared on the rear part of the revolving stage. This is done by stagehands who are not in the spotlight, but who nevertheless have to work purposefully and successfully so that after the stage has been turned, the actors can find the right set for the next act and act in it.

In the legislative process on party funding, the Federal Constitutional Court, the Federal President and the media as well as the Bundestag with parliamentary groups, the Committee on Internal Affairs and the plenary session acted at the front of the revolving stage. The treasurers' offices of the parties represented in the Bundestag, various academics, the Ministry of the Interior and the Bundestag administration acted away from the spectators and essentially unnoticed by them. The analytical grid used in policy field analysis, the policy cycle with the phases of problem emergence, thematisation, problem processing, implementation and evaluation, can reflect the process. The emergence of the problem ultimately goes back to the adoption of the Basic Law (1949), the financial problems of the parties in the 1950s and the Constitutional Court judgement of 1966, which are not reconstructed in detail here.

A complaint by the Greens to the Federal Constitutional Court triggered the renewed need for regulation of party funding. Above all, the Greens questioned the "equalisation of opportunities". At the hearing in autumn 1991, they found support for this from the CDU, while the SPD stuck to the situation created in 1983. The Greens' lawsuit offered the Second University Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court an opportunity to free itself from the legislative impasse of a fictitious "reimbursement of election campaign costs".

The clarification and correction of the previous case law by the highest German court put the political players (as so often before) under pressure to act. With the definition of the "absolute" and "relative upper limit", the unconstitutionality of any basic amount and the previous equalisation of opportunities as well as the resulting consequences for the tax concessions for membership fees and party donations, the agenda was set for the political players.

For the first phase of processing, parallel actions by two groups of actors (treasurers and scientists) in three overlapping arenas can be identified. The communication links were established by so-called entrepreneurs in the policy field (policy-entrepreneurs). Problem-solving began where the consequences of the judgement had an immediate effect: in the treasurers' offices of the parties, who agreed on exhausting the "absolute upper limit" (approx. DM 230 million per year) to safeguard the parties' financial status quo. However, the judgement of the Constitutional Court prevented the treasurers from freely agreeing on the distribution amount. The ban on a basic amount meant that the smaller (coalition) parties had to give up more public funds than the larger ones. The joint search for appropriate and "constitutionally sound" compensation prevented the parties concerned from reaching a rapid agreement.

In view of the highly controversial nature of the issue in the public eye and the repeatedly emphasised "party disenchantment", the allocation of public funds to the political parties (redistribution decision) inevitably had to take into account the articulated opinions of the media. A traditional "self-service cartel" of the parties would have met with too little acceptance. The treasurers therefore wanted to combine a visible limitation of subsidies for party activities by setting an "absolute upper limit" with a visually reduced remuneration for the individual vote and incentives for the parties' own initiative. The policy entrepreneurs are not the treasurers themselves, but their experienced staff.

The Federal President himself appeared as a critic of the parties in the summer of 1992. He attempted to eliminate the influence of the parties by deliberately setting up the commission, which has been prescribed in § 18, Para. 6 of the Political Parties Act since 1988, without taking the parties' proposals into account, indeed against them. With one exception, all members of the commission were lawyers, including the well-known party critic Hans-Herbert von Arnim.

Even before the oral hearing in Karlsruhe, a working group of political science experts on party funding had been formed in autumn 1991 in order to influence the parties' preferences by cooperating with them. In April 1993, a long-established discussion group on legal policy ("Bitburger Gespräche") brought together constitutional judges, the expert commission, treasurers and party representatives as well as academics for a clarifying discussion. Some journalists even reported on the conference. However, the event was by no means in the media spotlight. The extension of the agenda was considered again - without success.

The final decision-making process then reverted to established patterns of conflict management: Voting by the legitimised specialist politicians in parliament, combined with a higher weighting of the problem by up-zoning the decision-makers in the so-called elephant rounds (informal meetings of party and parliamentary group chairmen). At least two meetings were held. These were only worthwhile once certain points of conflict ("decision nodes") had been dealt with in advance, including the compensation for the basic amount and the amount for tax deductibility. Close co-operation and frequent queries to the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the Bundestag administration were necessary in order to legally secure the results in advance. Furthermore, it became very clear during the editing process that the interdependencies of the actors with the other policy areas must be seen as restrictions for the progress of the decision-making process - a problem that is often ignored when a legislative process is viewed in isolation. This is not just about the steering politicians (i.e. primarily the parliamentary group chairmen), but also about the specialised politicians responsible for the policy field.

The treasurers were involved in completely different political networks: the SPD treasurer is the spokesperson for SPD women on the abortion issue, the CSU treasurer is a parliamentary group expert on capital flight issues, the CDU treasurer and the F.D.P. treasurer have steering functions in their parliamentary groups as parliamentary group managing director and parliamentary group chairman respectively.

The stage is not turned because some do not want to, especially the treasurers, and others cannot - especially the media with their discontinuous and largely incompetent reporting on this topic. (A substantive discussion of the result can be found in Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen, 2/1994, p. 253ff.)

In the case of party funding, the legislative process does not correspond to the generally known procedure. Overall, it can be seen that a law comes about through the co-operation of public and private actors and that the latter can be quite dominant in the decision-making process. The so-called policy-entrepreneurs play an intermediary role. In this case, the law becomes what is possible according to Karlsruhe, the treasurers need for their coffers and the control politicians believe they can impose on the media.

The Constitutional Court regularly provides the impetus and important guidelines. The most important political arena is the discussion between the treasurers. This is where the details of the new regulation are determined by the broadest possible compromise. The rest is legislative routine - until the next trip to Karlsruhe.

Prof. Dr Hiltrud Naßmacher (52) qualified as a professor in 1986 and has since taught at the Universities of Konstanz, Göttingen, Trier, Münster and currently at the University/GH Siegen. His research focusses on comparative political science, including policy field analysis. After conducting empirical research on government action and political processes in Germany and abroad, she is currently working on individual issues relating to politics in the new Federal States as part of the Commission for Social and Political Change (KSPW). - Prof Dr Karl-Heinz Naßmacher (54) is currently Managing Director of the Institute of Political Science I - Comparative Politics in the Faculty 3 of Social Sciences. After working in the credit sector and in adult education as well as at the Universities of Cologne and Wuppertal, he has been working in Oldenburg since 1975. As Chair of the Research Committee "Political Finance and Political Corruption" of the International Political Science Association and member of the Commission of Independent Experts appointed by Federal President Herzog in accordance with §18 of the Political Parties Act, he works on problems of party financing in Western democracies, among other things.