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2018 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

4. Where Berlin Got It Terribly Wrong: German Foreign Policy Fiascos in the News Media

verfasst von : Mischa Hansel, Henrike Viehrig, Danae Ankel

Erschienen in: Political Mistakes and Policy Failures in International Relations

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter is based on salience and framing analysis of German news media coverage. We conceptualize fiascos as extreme subcase of mistakes and hypothesize that influential foreign policy norms trigger a fiasco framing in German media coverage. Our empirical results show a stable consensus about what can be regarded major foreign policy fiascos: Germany’s Yugoslavia policy in the 1990s, the failed referendums on the European Constitution in 2005, the decision on Libya in 2011 and, finally, the transatlantic crisis over Iraq in 2003. These findings as well as a qualitative analysis of a puzzling negative case confirm that a perceived violation of the norm of multilateralism is indeed almost a necessary condition for fiasco framing. Other findings relate to blame attribution and authorship of fiasco framing.

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Vorheriges Kapitel The Social Construction of Mistakes: Germany’s Abstention on UN Security Council Resolution 1973 on Libya

Nächstes Kapitel Policymaking in the Pub: New Labour’s European Policy Failure

In our understanding, fiascos are extreme subcases of mistakes. By characterizing an event or outcome as a fiasco, authors usually imply exceptional and arguably long-term programmatic or reputational consequences.

With respect to the Euro crisis, Germany has sometimes been accused of behaving quite unilaterally. In fact, it did act against the preferences of its European partners, for instance, by resisting the establishment of Eurobonds. In the overall scheme of things, however, Germany’s unfaltering support for the common currency can be said to corroborate its multilateral foreign policy tradition.

The terms in German were ‘Fiasko’, ‘Debakel’, ‘Desaster’, ‘Versagen’ and ‘Scheitern’.

Again, we need to emphasize that fiascos, in our understanding, represent an extreme subcase of mistakes. Because of extremely negative connotations they have a particularly lasting impact on foreign policy discourses. Germany’s policy towards Yugoslavia or the US intervention in Somalia might be cases in point.

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Our three-people coder team achieved an intercoder reliability rate of 0.67 which we were able to improve to 0.9 after a revision.

See the criticism of Michael Glos and other Christian Democrats who accused Chancellor Schröder to contribute to the failure of the EU referendums by promoting a Turkish EU membership (SZ 2005).

This is not to say that fiascos were necessarily unavoidable. Human agency still matters for social framing, but in different ways as compared to personally or politically framed narratives. Once ill-designed policies are firmly in place, it takes critical voices and bold measures to prevent negative outcomes. Since, however, dissident perspectives are unlikely to be able to influence policies, there is a high probability that fiascos, even though they are not determined, are going to happen.

The so-called German visa affair refers to the systematic misuse of visa, allegedly for the purpose of prostitution and human trafficking, which were issued by the German embassy in Kiev.

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Titel: Where Berlin Got It Terribly Wrong: German Foreign Policy Fiascos in the News Media
verfasst von: Mischa Hansel
Henrike Viehrig
Danae Ankel
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Buch: Political Mistakes and Policy Failures in International Relations
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-68172-6

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-68173-3

Copyright-Jahr: 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68173-3_4