Abstract

European policymaking in Britain and France has always reflected a clear aim of identifying the national interest in European integration and then using a highly centralised state machinery to pursue that aim. Germany’s European policymaking has been quite different, reflecting quite different aims. Whereas Britain and France have been concerned to preserve sovereignty, after 1949 the infant Federal Republic lacked sovereignty, and European integration was a way of recovering it. The national interest was European cooperation, and the policymaking machinery was not, therefore, designed to identify an(other) explicit national interest but rather to reflect a ‘reflexive multilateralism’, privileging European integration. It was, accordingly, notably porous and decentralised, although the decentralisation also reflected the Ressortprinzip (departmental principle) that is the core principle of governing in Germany. A final unique feature of German policymaking is the large role played by parapublic bodies such as the Bundesbank and the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht).