Interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung: the long and winding road of the legislative process in Germany. We mapped the complex stages of negotiation, preparation and coordination that turn an idea into law. And who influences them. Currently on 5 meters of paper, soon in digital form. A joint project with Gestaltungszentrale Politik, subscribe to our newsletter…
Peter Altmaier is the former Federal Minister of the Economy and former Head of the Federal Chancellery and has held many other posts in ministries and in parliament. During a public discussion, Altmaier gave a detailed presentation about the toolbox of practical politics and discussed a number of questions based on his long experience, among…
A glimpse behind the curtains of power politics: Peter Altmaier, the former Federal Minister of the Economy and former Head of the Chancellery will join Sven T. Siefken at the Federal University of Applied Administrative Sciences to discuss his experience in government leadership. The event is open to the public, more details are available in…
It was a bumpy path to the new government in Germany after the collapse of the previous one. Established routines helped to get it done: After the Bundestag election in early 2025, it took 72 days untill the new Chancellor was in office. Over 270 politicians from all levels of Federal, state and local politics…
How can coalitions build compromise in times of conflict? In the 2025 annual conference of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Politikwissenschaft, held at the University of Freiburg, Sven T. Siefken was an invited speaker to present his current research on coordination in the policy making process, pointing at five important steps in the process: coalition negotiations,…
How are conflicts within coalitions coordinated in the German policy-making process? Sven T. Siefken discussed findings from current research on the processes in the German polity, formal and informal institutions and the relevance of political actor behavior. The presentation was given in the 2025 Conference of the DAAD Centers for German and European Studies. It…
At the German University of Public Administration in Speyer, Sven T. Siefken was invited as guest speaker in the graduate lecture on the “Foundations of Public Decision Making”. He presented and discussed the many steps in the legislative process and their implications: Veto points, coordination mechanisms, oversight and engagement.
The coalition contract of CDU, CSU and SPD includes agreements to set up 15 expert commissions, a very high number compared to previous years. On the public radio station MDR, Sven T. Siefken talked about the different uses and reasons for this particular instrument of policy advice, varying from substantial advice to symbolism. The article…
The new Federal government of Germany is sworn in on May 6, 2025. In the webinar on May 8, Barbara Donovan, Professor of Political Science at Wesleyan College, Ed Turner, Associate Dean of the College of Business and Social Sciences, Aston University, and Sven T. Siefken look at the process of government formation and discuss…
How long is your contract? It was neither negotiated at turbo speed nor with a super slim result: The coalition contract 2025 is shorter than the last three but longer than most. And government formation – very likely – will take exactly the same amount of time in 2025 as it did in 2021: 73…
The coalition negotiations in Germany are moving to the next phase: From the working groups to the main negotiation group. In 2023, we analyzed changes in health policy along those steps. On March 25, Süddeutsche Zeitung picked up some of the findings and related them to the current negotiations as they are moving from the…
In the pre-negotiation talks for coalition formation, CDU/CSU and SPD decided on far ranging plans to invest in infrastructure and military spending. This happens with the background of an announced reduction in international support by the United States. To make this spending increase possible, the German Constitution with its mandatory debt brake has to be…
An edited volume, published in 2024, brings together analyses made at the outset of the new traffic light coalition in Germany. Most of the contributions have previously been published in the Journal German Politics and Society. Sven T. Siefken wrote a chapter on the continuing formalization of coalition formation. Details about the new book can…
Coalition negotiations play a key role in government formation, but they have not been analyzed much in detail. In Germany, the past decades have seen an ongoing differentiation of their organization, leading to a complex multi-level negotiation structure with a policy-oriented division of labor. Studying the working group on health policy in the coalition negotiations…
In this AICGS webinar, Tom Nuttall, Constanze Stelzenmüller, and Sven Siefken discuss the state of the German coalition negotiations, how these negotiations differ from others, and what challenges the new government will face.