Identity, norms, and German foreign policy :the social construction of Ostpolitik and European Monetary Union

Abstract

This thesis deals with the question why Westbindung has been such a significant element of (West) Germany’s foreign policy orientation over the last fifty years. Employing a constructivist institutionalist approach, which focuses on normative identity constructions, I attribute this lasting impact on foreign policy in crucial moments to the continuous consensus of (West) German party elites on a constitutive collective identity, German Europeanness. In an analysis of party political discourse in the 1950’s, I describe how this enduring consensus among the mainstream parties on a "European Germany" first came about, which equated "Europe" with "superseding the nationalist German past" and located Germany firmly as a "part of the West versus the Communist East." The following case studies of New Ostpolitik at the end of the 1960’s/beginning of the 1970's and Germany's support for European Monetary Union in the 1990's are then conceptualized as cases of "identity conflict" in which in each case and against contrary expectations, Europeanness prevailed against contending identity constructions, those residual nationalist identities, which expressed themselves in the claim to sole representation in the case of Ostpolitik, and Deutsche Mark-patriotism in the case of EMU. According to a constructivist account, the fundamental policy change of Ostpolitik was made possible because its supporters could build on - by now - uncontested German Europeanness, and managed to transform and Europeanize the normative identity constructions regarding the resolution of the "German question": Instead of the previous claim to sole representation, which entailed that German reunification would have to precede West German attempts at European détente, a Europeanized notion of the "German question" implied that German unity was only viable within a European context. In the case of EMU, the constancy of German state identity constructions was crucial for the continuity in foreign policy orientations toward European integration: Europeanness proved dominant over D-Afarfc-patriotism regarding the question if Germany should be part of EMU, while D-Mark-patriot ism only had an impact on the design German politicians favored for Monetary Union.