"The German model and European integration: Between unification and union"

This paper explores the impact of European integration on the German polity broadly conceived: specifically, the formal institutions, rules and procedures of democracy as well as key elements of the German model of political economy. As one of the founding members of the European Economic Community, Germany has had a long and intimate association with the European project, which increases the probability that the effects of integration on the polity will be both consequential and conspicuous. This hunch is strengthened by the fact that the Federal Republic was and is no ordinary member. As a young, fledgling democracy in the 1950s, Germany embraced European integration with a markedly different approach to national sovereignty in comparison to other large European countries. Specifically, the FRG exhibited a strong inclination to vest elements of national sovereignty in supranational institutions and, more generally, an ingrained, even exaggerated support for multilateralism. These reflexes, which can be traced back to internalized lessons drawn from the Nazi experience as well as to firm international expectations about appropriate West German conduct on the world stage, left the country even more open to supranational influences. The outline of this paper is basically chronological. First, I establish central features of the West German model as it developed in the postwar period, and examine its relationship to the evolving European project. I then move to a discussion of the separate yet synergistic impact of unification and European Union on the German model, followed by a general analysis of the main findings.