Josef Hien | Mid Sweden University (original) (raw)

Papers by Josef Hien

Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 20, 2022

New Perspectives, 2017

and WZB Berlin Johan Van der Walt's article "When One Religious Extremism Unmasks Another" is tho... more and WZB Berlin Johan Van der Walt's article "When One Religious Extremism Unmasks Another" is thought provoking and unique. He argues that Northern creditor countries operate according to the logic of Protestant predestination theory when they engage with Southern European debtor countries. This Protestant logic is embodied in ordoliberalism, a German socioeconomic theory, which van der Walt identifies as the major German political instruction sheet to the sovereign debt crisis. Ordoliberalism leads to austerity, and austerity provides a fertile ground for a de-hermeneuticized form of Islam that sprawls in the suburbs of France and Belgium. In the following essay, I would like to make three points in response to van der Walt's argument. The first one considers the connection between Protestantism and ordoliberalism that is central to van der Walt's argument. While van der Walt is right 115

The Religious Foundations of the Italian and German Welfare States What explains the formation of... more The Religious Foundations of the Italian and German Welfare States What explains the formation of conservative welfare states in continental Europe? In recent years, scholars have increasingly pointed to the power of religion. Studying the Catholic influence on the formation of the welfare state in Italy and Germany, this paper shows that the same religion can influence different welfare state outcomes. The German Catholic church had a strong influence on the formation of the first modern welfare sate while in Italy the very same institution actively forestalled the development of a modern welfare state. The key to this counterintuitive observation lies in the different patterns of ideational competition. While the Catholic Church in Germany entered into a virtuous cycle of ideational competition, Italian Catholicism was caught in a vicious cycle that did not allow generating modern social security ideas.

Ordoliberalism and European Economic Policy, 2019

Critical Policy Studies, 2021

This is a beautiful book: With a matt pink cover and a massive 347 pages, it gets the reading app... more This is a beautiful book: With a matt pink cover and a massive 347 pages, it gets the reading appetite going. The book consists of 12 chapters written by illustrious experts on neoliberalism that the editors Dieter Plewhe, Quinn Slobodian and Philip Mirowski have drummed up. Nine Lives of Neoliberalism is not the first collaboration of these giants of the study of neoliberalism. It is the sequel to The Road from Mont Pèlerin. The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective, which in 2009 set new standards for the study of neoliberalism. The book is still today, ten years after its publication, the go-to book on the diffusion of neoliberalism. Given all this, my expectations toward the new book were stellar. Luckily, I have not been disillusioned. Better than the book itself if only one thing: that you can download an ungated free version. Knowledge to the people! There is but one caveat and that comes from the main message of the book. If I had to summarize it in a single sentence, ...

Integration-through-crisis has affected EMU governance in myriad ways. This paper focuses on two ... more Integration-through-crisis has affected EMU governance in myriad ways. This paper focuses on two trends, both of which have negative implications for democratic legitimacy in the EU and its member states. Firstly, the crisis has led to an increased reliance on non-majoritarian modes of policy-making, at the expense of democratically accountable institutions and processes. Secondly, the crisis has led to a new emphasis on coercive enforcement in EMU, at the expense of the voluntary cooperation that previously characterised (and sustained) the EU as a community of law. The ECB is implicated in both of these trends. In relation to the first, while the ECB was already unusually independent even by the standards of central banks this could be justified, prior to the crisis, by the specificity, technicality and low salience of its monetary policy mandate. However, the crisis has resulted in both the politicisation of the Bank’s mandate and its de facto expansion, in ways that render its i...

This chapter assesses the changing institutional, political, and social anchoring of faith-based ... more This chapter assesses the changing institutional, political, and social anchoring of faith-based organizations in Germany. It analyzes how the two largest organizations, Caritas and Diakonie, reply to the double-pressure of marketization and secularization. Caritas and Diakonie have traditionally played an important role in the German welfare state, enjoying many institutional and legal provisions. However, they currently face two major challenges: first, liberalization of the care market in the early 1990 has stripped them of many of their legal and financial advantages and exposed them to market-based competition. The integration of Eastern European countries into the labor market regime of the single European market has amplified this pressure. Second, the proselyting aims of Caritas and Diakonie face growing public and political resistance in Germany, where church membership is in steady decline since the 1970s. This double-pressure has led to a crisis of identity, which might t...

The thesis investigates the influence of political Catholicism and Catholic social doctrine on th... more The thesis investigates the influence of political Catholicism and Catholic social doctrine on the evolution of the continental European welfare regimes. Paradoxically it finds that the doctrine had less influence on the formation of welfare regimes in countries where Catholicism was strong in contrast to countries where it was in a weak position. This finding does not only challenge many of the accounts that have perceived and analyzed religious influences on welfare state formation as a static and quantifiable variable but also addresses and rivals most postulations of mainstream welfare state theories such as Logic of Industrialism, Power Resource, Class Coalition and Employer Centered Approaches. In contrast to these accounts the thesis finds that welfare in continental Europe evolved during the 19 th century and most of the 20 th century as the result of a battle over ideas and worldviews between different societal groups and their political outlets. Which idea and worldview ma...

For centuries, churches were the main institutional providers of welfare in Europe before the sta... more For centuries, churches were the main institutional providers of welfare in Europe before the state took over this role in the late 19th century. The influence of modernization theory meant that modern welfare state theorists increasingly regarded religion and its impact on welfare as a relic from the distant past. It was anticipated that modern, differentiated, and industrialized societies would see the decline and inevitable disappearance of religious welfare provision along with religiosity. Surprisingly, however, at the beginning of the 21st century in many modern industrialized societies, religious institutions are increasingly becoming involved in welfare provision again. The religion blind classic welfare state literature offers no explanation for this phenomenon. This present paper argues that the resurgence of faith-based welfare providers is the reversal of a phenomenon that occurred in the late 19th century when modern states started to strip religious providers of their ...

JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 2021

In this article, we argue that an analysis of the conflict around the nature and limits of Europe... more In this article, we argue that an analysis of the conflict around the nature and limits of European integration that arose between Catholic and Protestant Christian Democrats in the postwar era can shed new light on the expansionary dynamics that gradually came to characterize the project of European integration. Catholic Christian Democrats framed the unification of Europe as a relatively exclusionary cultural-civilizational endeavour, while Protestant Christian Democrats favoured a more inclusive conception of Europe that prioritised free trade over cultural homogeneity. Focusing specifically on Germany, we suggest that the eventual resolution of the intra-party struggle between the two camps in the early 1970s was a crucial enabler for including more and more countries into the European project. For it was only thereafter that Catholic Christian Democrats began supporting the expansion of European integration beyond the core Europe of the original Six, with geopolitical concerns gradually crowding out cultural ones.

Critical Policy Studies, 2020

Culture is increasingly used as an explanatory variable for tax evasion. So far, we know, however... more Culture is increasingly used as an explanatory variable for tax evasion. So far, we know, however, little about the mechanisms that link culture and tax behavior. This paper is a historical-sociological study of how religion influences tax behavior. The contribution focuses on the Italian case, among Western-European countries one with the highest evasion rates. It argues that the willingness of Italians to pay their taxes still suffers today from the Church-state conflict of the 19th century. To the Vatican, territorial integration of the Italian state posed an existential threat, both at the political (loss of territory) and at the spiritual level (diffusion of liberalism). The paper shows how Catholic socioeconomic thinkers developed ideas about just taxation in response to Italian reunification that were directed against the Italian state and used by the Vatican to delegitimize it. The paper shows that it is not only rational decisions about the possibility to get audited or low public service provision that drives tax evasion. Instead Italian tax evasion is legitimized through a historically grown mistrust toward the state.

Whether the EU is a community of shared values is increasingly contested in public debates and ac... more Whether the EU is a community of shared values is increasingly contested in public debates and academic discourses alike. We analyse the level and change in the acceptance of the EU’s officially promoted values in seven domains: personal freedom, individual autonomy, social solidarity, ethnic tolerance, civic honesty, gender equality and liberal democracy. We find that EU-member populations support the EU- values strongly and increasingly over time, especially in individual freedoms and gender equality. Regarding support for these values, EU-member populations are notably distinct from non-EU populations. Simultaneously, however, EU-member populations are internalizing the EU-values at different speeds—alongside traditional cultural fault lines that continue to differentiate Europe—in the following order from fastest to slowest internalization: (1) Protestant, (2) Catholic, (3) Ex-communist and lastly (4) Orthodox countries. In conclusion, the EU- population writ large evolves into ...

Journal of European Public Policy, 2020

Christian Democratic socioeconomic ideology underwent a paradigm shift through the Europeanizatio... more Christian Democratic socioeconomic ideology underwent a paradigm shift through the Europeanization of its party networks. Christian Democratic networks started with a distinctive Catholic socioeconomic ideology emphasizing corporatism, welfare transfers and a coordination of the economy. This institutional blueprint influenced the early years of European socioeconomic integration. The original social Catholicism was gradually replaced by Protestant and secular inspired socioeconomic ideology, emphasizing undistorted market competition with successive enlargements of the European Union and the European People's Party (EPP). The article empirically reconstructs the contested process of transformation of the EPPs socio economic ideology through the inclusion of mainstream conservative and Protestant Christian Democratic parties and its impact on European Christian Democracy and the European integration process.

Global Perspectives, 2020

The immediate effects of the Euro crisis have been tamed but the crisis has soured the relations ... more The immediate effects of the Euro crisis have been tamed but the crisis has soured the relations between Southern and Northern Member states for many years to come. Comparative political economy explains the frictions between North and South as a result of different institutional configurations of national economies (Varieties of Capitalism), different interests of capital and labor coalitions (growth model perspective) or ideational traditions (ordoliberal vs dirigisme). We argue that the exclusive focus of these approaches on either, rational institutionalism, interest coalitions or economic ideas obscures that these three factors come together in a long-term evolutionary trajectory that has formed national economic cultures within the Eurozone since the 1950s. We examplify our cultural political economy approach showing empircally how the German and Italian political economies developed in different ways since the end of WWII. In the second part of our contribution we develop a c...

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

The negative perception of Italians of their state has been formed by the deep conflict between C... more The negative perception of Italians of their state has been formed by the deep conflict between Church and state that emerged during the Napoleonic occupation of Italy and reached its peak with Italian unification in the late nineteenth century. To the Vatican, territorial integration of the Italian nation state posed an existential threat, both at the political level (loss of territory) and at the spiritual level (diffusion of liberalism). From unification onwards the Vatican did all it could to harm the legitimacy of the Italian state. This chapter analyzes the Vatican strategy to delegitimize the Italian state and its right to tax. It shows how the willingness of Italians to pay their taxes still suffers today from the Church–state conflict.

FEMINA POLITICA - Zeitschrift für feministische Politikwissenschaft, 2018

JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 2020

So far, the Euro crisis has been analysed using the 'varieties of capitalism' concept, the growth... more So far, the Euro crisis has been analysed using the 'varieties of capitalism' concept, the growth model framework or ideational accounts. These approaches have generally been applied in isolation or in opposition to one another. There has been little cross-fertilization, due to the different epistemological points of departure that emphasize either institutional rational efficiency, material driving forces or ideational motives for the political economies during the crisis. This article instead applies the concept of cultural political economy to today's socioeconomic tensions between northern and southern member states. Cultural political economy offers a historical evolutionary perspective showing how institutional, material and ideational motivations have co-evolved in European member states since the 1950s, contributing to the discrepancies that we witness today between the northern and southern EU countries. The article exemplifies the cultural political economy approach against the background of the German-Italian irritations that have sparked through the crisis.

German Politics, 2020

Since the 1970s welfare organisations operated by the churches in Germany have evolved into the c... more Since the 1970s welfare organisations operated by the churches in Germany have evolved into the country's largest employers. While church affiliation and attendance dropped sharply, the churches grew as employers. Caritas and Diakonie, the two largest faith-based welfare providers, enjoy a special status as ecclesiastical employers. They can dismiss employees that do not live in congruence with their worldview such as homosexuals, those who have remarried or those who exit the church. Moreover their employees are exempted from the right to strike. The following is the first study that offers a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenal rise of faith-based welfare providers in Germany and the consequences of their special status for employees. The encompassing analysis of labour-law conflicts in German courts between ecclesiastical employers and their employees shows that the contentiousness of those controversies has increased over time. We explain this with the changed composition in the workforce of Caritas and Diakonie which has, in contrast to former times, today much less connection to the values of the church. Moreover, our analysis of legal cases shows that Caritas and Diakonie so far have been able to successfully defend their special status in front of German courts.

Sozialer Fortschritt, 2018

Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch ge... more Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence.

Oxford University Press eBooks, Oct 20, 2022

New Perspectives, 2017

and WZB Berlin Johan Van der Walt's article "When One Religious Extremism Unmasks Another" is tho... more and WZB Berlin Johan Van der Walt's article "When One Religious Extremism Unmasks Another" is thought provoking and unique. He argues that Northern creditor countries operate according to the logic of Protestant predestination theory when they engage with Southern European debtor countries. This Protestant logic is embodied in ordoliberalism, a German socioeconomic theory, which van der Walt identifies as the major German political instruction sheet to the sovereign debt crisis. Ordoliberalism leads to austerity, and austerity provides a fertile ground for a de-hermeneuticized form of Islam that sprawls in the suburbs of France and Belgium. In the following essay, I would like to make three points in response to van der Walt's argument. The first one considers the connection between Protestantism and ordoliberalism that is central to van der Walt's argument. While van der Walt is right 115

The Religious Foundations of the Italian and German Welfare States What explains the formation of... more The Religious Foundations of the Italian and German Welfare States What explains the formation of conservative welfare states in continental Europe? In recent years, scholars have increasingly pointed to the power of religion. Studying the Catholic influence on the formation of the welfare state in Italy and Germany, this paper shows that the same religion can influence different welfare state outcomes. The German Catholic church had a strong influence on the formation of the first modern welfare sate while in Italy the very same institution actively forestalled the development of a modern welfare state. The key to this counterintuitive observation lies in the different patterns of ideational competition. While the Catholic Church in Germany entered into a virtuous cycle of ideational competition, Italian Catholicism was caught in a vicious cycle that did not allow generating modern social security ideas.

Ordoliberalism and European Economic Policy, 2019

Critical Policy Studies, 2021

This is a beautiful book: With a matt pink cover and a massive 347 pages, it gets the reading app... more This is a beautiful book: With a matt pink cover and a massive 347 pages, it gets the reading appetite going. The book consists of 12 chapters written by illustrious experts on neoliberalism that the editors Dieter Plewhe, Quinn Slobodian and Philip Mirowski have drummed up. Nine Lives of Neoliberalism is not the first collaboration of these giants of the study of neoliberalism. It is the sequel to The Road from Mont Pèlerin. The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective, which in 2009 set new standards for the study of neoliberalism. The book is still today, ten years after its publication, the go-to book on the diffusion of neoliberalism. Given all this, my expectations toward the new book were stellar. Luckily, I have not been disillusioned. Better than the book itself if only one thing: that you can download an ungated free version. Knowledge to the people! There is but one caveat and that comes from the main message of the book. If I had to summarize it in a single sentence, ...

Integration-through-crisis has affected EMU governance in myriad ways. This paper focuses on two ... more Integration-through-crisis has affected EMU governance in myriad ways. This paper focuses on two trends, both of which have negative implications for democratic legitimacy in the EU and its member states. Firstly, the crisis has led to an increased reliance on non-majoritarian modes of policy-making, at the expense of democratically accountable institutions and processes. Secondly, the crisis has led to a new emphasis on coercive enforcement in EMU, at the expense of the voluntary cooperation that previously characterised (and sustained) the EU as a community of law. The ECB is implicated in both of these trends. In relation to the first, while the ECB was already unusually independent even by the standards of central banks this could be justified, prior to the crisis, by the specificity, technicality and low salience of its monetary policy mandate. However, the crisis has resulted in both the politicisation of the Bank’s mandate and its de facto expansion, in ways that render its i...

This chapter assesses the changing institutional, political, and social anchoring of faith-based ... more This chapter assesses the changing institutional, political, and social anchoring of faith-based organizations in Germany. It analyzes how the two largest organizations, Caritas and Diakonie, reply to the double-pressure of marketization and secularization. Caritas and Diakonie have traditionally played an important role in the German welfare state, enjoying many institutional and legal provisions. However, they currently face two major challenges: first, liberalization of the care market in the early 1990 has stripped them of many of their legal and financial advantages and exposed them to market-based competition. The integration of Eastern European countries into the labor market regime of the single European market has amplified this pressure. Second, the proselyting aims of Caritas and Diakonie face growing public and political resistance in Germany, where church membership is in steady decline since the 1970s. This double-pressure has led to a crisis of identity, which might t...

The thesis investigates the influence of political Catholicism and Catholic social doctrine on th... more The thesis investigates the influence of political Catholicism and Catholic social doctrine on the evolution of the continental European welfare regimes. Paradoxically it finds that the doctrine had less influence on the formation of welfare regimes in countries where Catholicism was strong in contrast to countries where it was in a weak position. This finding does not only challenge many of the accounts that have perceived and analyzed religious influences on welfare state formation as a static and quantifiable variable but also addresses and rivals most postulations of mainstream welfare state theories such as Logic of Industrialism, Power Resource, Class Coalition and Employer Centered Approaches. In contrast to these accounts the thesis finds that welfare in continental Europe evolved during the 19 th century and most of the 20 th century as the result of a battle over ideas and worldviews between different societal groups and their political outlets. Which idea and worldview ma...

For centuries, churches were the main institutional providers of welfare in Europe before the sta... more For centuries, churches were the main institutional providers of welfare in Europe before the state took over this role in the late 19th century. The influence of modernization theory meant that modern welfare state theorists increasingly regarded religion and its impact on welfare as a relic from the distant past. It was anticipated that modern, differentiated, and industrialized societies would see the decline and inevitable disappearance of religious welfare provision along with religiosity. Surprisingly, however, at the beginning of the 21st century in many modern industrialized societies, religious institutions are increasingly becoming involved in welfare provision again. The religion blind classic welfare state literature offers no explanation for this phenomenon. This present paper argues that the resurgence of faith-based welfare providers is the reversal of a phenomenon that occurred in the late 19th century when modern states started to strip religious providers of their ...

JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 2021

In this article, we argue that an analysis of the conflict around the nature and limits of Europe... more In this article, we argue that an analysis of the conflict around the nature and limits of European integration that arose between Catholic and Protestant Christian Democrats in the postwar era can shed new light on the expansionary dynamics that gradually came to characterize the project of European integration. Catholic Christian Democrats framed the unification of Europe as a relatively exclusionary cultural-civilizational endeavour, while Protestant Christian Democrats favoured a more inclusive conception of Europe that prioritised free trade over cultural homogeneity. Focusing specifically on Germany, we suggest that the eventual resolution of the intra-party struggle between the two camps in the early 1970s was a crucial enabler for including more and more countries into the European project. For it was only thereafter that Catholic Christian Democrats began supporting the expansion of European integration beyond the core Europe of the original Six, with geopolitical concerns gradually crowding out cultural ones.

Critical Policy Studies, 2020

Culture is increasingly used as an explanatory variable for tax evasion. So far, we know, however... more Culture is increasingly used as an explanatory variable for tax evasion. So far, we know, however, little about the mechanisms that link culture and tax behavior. This paper is a historical-sociological study of how religion influences tax behavior. The contribution focuses on the Italian case, among Western-European countries one with the highest evasion rates. It argues that the willingness of Italians to pay their taxes still suffers today from the Church-state conflict of the 19th century. To the Vatican, territorial integration of the Italian state posed an existential threat, both at the political (loss of territory) and at the spiritual level (diffusion of liberalism). The paper shows how Catholic socioeconomic thinkers developed ideas about just taxation in response to Italian reunification that were directed against the Italian state and used by the Vatican to delegitimize it. The paper shows that it is not only rational decisions about the possibility to get audited or low public service provision that drives tax evasion. Instead Italian tax evasion is legitimized through a historically grown mistrust toward the state.

Whether the EU is a community of shared values is increasingly contested in public debates and ac... more Whether the EU is a community of shared values is increasingly contested in public debates and academic discourses alike. We analyse the level and change in the acceptance of the EU’s officially promoted values in seven domains: personal freedom, individual autonomy, social solidarity, ethnic tolerance, civic honesty, gender equality and liberal democracy. We find that EU-member populations support the EU- values strongly and increasingly over time, especially in individual freedoms and gender equality. Regarding support for these values, EU-member populations are notably distinct from non-EU populations. Simultaneously, however, EU-member populations are internalizing the EU-values at different speeds—alongside traditional cultural fault lines that continue to differentiate Europe—in the following order from fastest to slowest internalization: (1) Protestant, (2) Catholic, (3) Ex-communist and lastly (4) Orthodox countries. In conclusion, the EU- population writ large evolves into ...

Journal of European Public Policy, 2020

Christian Democratic socioeconomic ideology underwent a paradigm shift through the Europeanizatio... more Christian Democratic socioeconomic ideology underwent a paradigm shift through the Europeanization of its party networks. Christian Democratic networks started with a distinctive Catholic socioeconomic ideology emphasizing corporatism, welfare transfers and a coordination of the economy. This institutional blueprint influenced the early years of European socioeconomic integration. The original social Catholicism was gradually replaced by Protestant and secular inspired socioeconomic ideology, emphasizing undistorted market competition with successive enlargements of the European Union and the European People's Party (EPP). The article empirically reconstructs the contested process of transformation of the EPPs socio economic ideology through the inclusion of mainstream conservative and Protestant Christian Democratic parties and its impact on European Christian Democracy and the European integration process.

Global Perspectives, 2020

The immediate effects of the Euro crisis have been tamed but the crisis has soured the relations ... more The immediate effects of the Euro crisis have been tamed but the crisis has soured the relations between Southern and Northern Member states for many years to come. Comparative political economy explains the frictions between North and South as a result of different institutional configurations of national economies (Varieties of Capitalism), different interests of capital and labor coalitions (growth model perspective) or ideational traditions (ordoliberal vs dirigisme). We argue that the exclusive focus of these approaches on either, rational institutionalism, interest coalitions or economic ideas obscures that these three factors come together in a long-term evolutionary trajectory that has formed national economic cultures within the Eurozone since the 1950s. We examplify our cultural political economy approach showing empircally how the German and Italian political economies developed in different ways since the end of WWII. In the second part of our contribution we develop a c...

Oxford Scholarship Online, 2018

The negative perception of Italians of their state has been formed by the deep conflict between C... more The negative perception of Italians of their state has been formed by the deep conflict between Church and state that emerged during the Napoleonic occupation of Italy and reached its peak with Italian unification in the late nineteenth century. To the Vatican, territorial integration of the Italian nation state posed an existential threat, both at the political level (loss of territory) and at the spiritual level (diffusion of liberalism). From unification onwards the Vatican did all it could to harm the legitimacy of the Italian state. This chapter analyzes the Vatican strategy to delegitimize the Italian state and its right to tax. It shows how the willingness of Italians to pay their taxes still suffers today from the Church–state conflict.

FEMINA POLITICA - Zeitschrift für feministische Politikwissenschaft, 2018

JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 2020

So far, the Euro crisis has been analysed using the 'varieties of capitalism' concept, the growth... more So far, the Euro crisis has been analysed using the 'varieties of capitalism' concept, the growth model framework or ideational accounts. These approaches have generally been applied in isolation or in opposition to one another. There has been little cross-fertilization, due to the different epistemological points of departure that emphasize either institutional rational efficiency, material driving forces or ideational motives for the political economies during the crisis. This article instead applies the concept of cultural political economy to today's socioeconomic tensions between northern and southern member states. Cultural political economy offers a historical evolutionary perspective showing how institutional, material and ideational motivations have co-evolved in European member states since the 1950s, contributing to the discrepancies that we witness today between the northern and southern EU countries. The article exemplifies the cultural political economy approach against the background of the German-Italian irritations that have sparked through the crisis.

German Politics, 2020

Since the 1970s welfare organisations operated by the churches in Germany have evolved into the c... more Since the 1970s welfare organisations operated by the churches in Germany have evolved into the country's largest employers. While church affiliation and attendance dropped sharply, the churches grew as employers. Caritas and Diakonie, the two largest faith-based welfare providers, enjoy a special status as ecclesiastical employers. They can dismiss employees that do not live in congruence with their worldview such as homosexuals, those who have remarried or those who exit the church. Moreover their employees are exempted from the right to strike. The following is the first study that offers a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenal rise of faith-based welfare providers in Germany and the consequences of their special status for employees. The encompassing analysis of labour-law conflicts in German courts between ecclesiastical employers and their employees shows that the contentiousness of those controversies has increased over time. We explain this with the changed composition in the workforce of Caritas and Diakonie which has, in contrast to former times, today much less connection to the values of the church. Moreover, our analysis of legal cases shows that Caritas and Diakonie so far have been able to successfully defend their special status in front of German courts.

Sozialer Fortschritt, 2018

Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch ge... more Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence.

This thesis investigates the influence of political Catholicism and Catholic social doctrine on t... more This thesis investigates the influence of political Catholicism and Catholic social doctrine on the evolution of the continental European welfare regimes. Paradoxically it finds that the doctrine had less influence on the formation of welfare regimes in countries where Catholicism was strong in contrast to countries where it was in a weak minority position. This finding does not only challenge many of the accounts that have perceived and analyzed religious influences on welfare state formation as a static and quantifiable variable but also addresses and rivals most postulations of mainstream welfare state theories such as Logic of Industrialism, Power Resource, Class Coalition and Employer Centered Approaches. In contrast to these postulations this thesis finds that welfare in continental Europe evolved during the 19 th century and most of the 20 th century as the result of a battle over ideas and worldviews between different societal groups and their political outlets. Which idea and worldview makes its way into institutional implementation is not primarily connected to the mere numerical strength or power resources of its societal and political representation but is a function of the performance of the programmatic ideas themselves. Decisive is how they strive in competition with other programmatic ideas. Two mechanisms stick out that determine whether programmatic ideas are successful: the performance and evolution of the idea in a process of ideational competition and the degree of ideational compatibility of a programmatic idea other ideas that enables the formation of ideational and political coalitions.