Binding hands as a strategy for economic reform: Government by commission

This article explores the role of the strategy of binding hands, its paradoxical use as both a constraint and as a source of leadership power over economic reform in Germany, its contested nature, how it is embedded in systemic characteristics of German politics, the ambivalence between binding in as strategy and binding in as legacy, and the role of unanticipated consequences. In a political system that offers great opportunities to veto players, there are powerful systemic incentives to seek out and use external discipline. However, like Europeanisation, government by commission has proved a very imperfect device for controlling domestic policy processes. It has had complex, differentiated effects on German economic reform. These effects are shaped by the structural privileging of certain ideas in economic policy; the skills of leaders in negotiating this context and seeking out and using opportunities to enhance the credibility of reform through pre-commitment, including strategic sequencing; the various factors that influence how credible binding hands is judged by elites, publics and markets; and the role of policy dynamism and unanticipated consequences. *This paper draws on extensive interviews conducted as part of a Nuffield Foundation grant and also archival work conducted during a period spent in Berlin with support from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). My thanks are due both to the Nuffield Foundation and to DAAD.