Producer Group Politics in the German Growth Model: Social Support for and Opposition to the Export-Oriented Growth Regime

Mischa Stratenwerth

National economic growth models are shaped by underlying (macroeconomic) policy regimes. Since gains and losses of growth models are unequally distributed, maintaining sufficient political and social support for these regimes should be a constant struggle. To learn more about the domestic political dynamics of growth regimes, the dissertation project aims to reconstruct the positions of collective actors regarding the policy foundations of the German export-led growth model. It investigates groups of organized capital and organized labor in different sectors of the economy that are expected to be differently affected by an export-promoting policy regime. The main focus is on recent crucial debates in essential policy fields of the German undervaluation regime. Building on the emerging growth model literature and the literature on producer group coalitions, the thesis primarily addresses the empirical question of whether there have been considerable sector-based or class-based differences in the support for export-led growth in Germany and scrutinizes whether the export-promoting policy configuration has been underpinned by cross-class coalitions. The research approach is primarily qualitative and relies on interviews, grey literature, media reports, and other documents. Project duration: October 2018 to March 2022.