The parties‐do‐matter hypothesis and the case of the federal republic of Germany

According to the parties‐do‐matter hypothesis, differences in policy outputs and outcomes are associated with ‐ and, by inference, are dependent upon ‐ differences in the partisan composition of government. It is to a critical evaluation of the parties‐do‐matter view and its applicability to non‐majoritarian and ‘semi‐sovereign’ states, such as the Federal Republic of Germany, that attention is given in this article. It is argued that the parties‐do‐matter hypothesis deserves credit for its robust explanatory power. However, a full understanding of the magnitude of party affects requires systematic analysis of differences in the room for manoeuvre that constitutional structures, or state structures, have generated for incumbent parties as well as for opposition parties. Bringing state structures back into comparative public policy studies also helps to solve a puzzle which has thus not been well answered: why is it that particular radical policy change has taken place in one group of democracies, and why is it that a remarkable degree of policy continuity and more muted partisan cycles in public policy tends to be characteristic of another group of constitutional democracies?