Ein Erziehungskartell zur «Heilung der Geister»? Ludwig Erhards Bundeswirtschaftsministerium und die gescheiterte Wettbewerbsordnung der Konsumseifenindustrie von 1954/55

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-216
Author(s):  
Raphael Hennecke

AbstractThis article deals with a case study from competition policy and decartelization in West Germany in the early to mid 1950 s. Whereas much research has focused on the discussions about the German cartel law of 1958 and its long process of formation, this article takes a closer look at the possibilities that Ludwig Erhard and his Ministry of Economics already had under the Allied Laws of 1947 that remained in place until 1957. This is demonstrated by a case study about the soap cartel of 1954/55. While Erhard and most of his civil servants were aware that this cartel would not be able to solve the soap industry’s problems, they still decided to push the Allied authorities towards approving it to demonstrate the inadequacy of cartelization. Thereby, they dealt a blow to those leaders of industry associations arguing against a strict ban on cartels. One of Erhard’s most influential opponents, Fritz Berg, had praised the soap cartel, which allowed more internal competition than simple price fixing cartels, as a model for future cartels and an example proving the disadvantages of a flat-out cartel ban. By letting the cartel fail under the conditions of a rapidly modernizing market instead of banning it, Erhard dealt a major blow to Berg’s argument. This way, Berg and his allies could not blame the failure of the soap industry on decartelization.

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle C. Pautz ◽  
Laura Roselle

Perceptions of government and civil servants are shaped by a variety of factors including popular culture. In the public administration literature the significant role that film and other narrative forms have on citizens’ perceptions is duly noted, and there is ample research on politicians and military heroes in film, but a focus on civil servants remains largely elusive. Among the sparse literature centered on civil servants are studies that employ a case study approach or focus on a few films. In contrast, our research employs a large sample of 150 films. These films comprise the top ten box-office grossing films from 1992 through 2006; therefore we examine the films most likely to have been seen by a majority of movie-watching Americans. More than 60 percent of the films in our sample portray government as bad, inefficient, and incompetent. However, the data on more than 300 civil servants yield intriguing findings. Surprising, in light of the negative depiction of government, is the positive depiction of individual civil servants. Half of civil servants were positively portrayed, and only 40 percent were negatively depicted. Americans may view government negatively, but they see in film positive depictions of how individual civil servants can and do make a positive difference.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002198942110328
Author(s):  
Jason Sandhar

This article shows how the colonial nature essay both spoofs and affirms crises of the European self in British India’s post-Rebellion era (1857–1947). Authored by English civil servants who took to naturalism as a hobby, the nature essay’s exaggerated misadventures with quotidian animals such as ants, beetles, and mosquitos parody British accounts of the 1857 Rebellion, while dehumanizing caricatures of uncooperative servants reduce Indian society’s complex hierarchies of class, caste, gender, and race to buffoonery. Taking as a case study two of the genre’s exemplars, Edward Hamilton Aitken and Philip Robinson, I read the colonized animals and people in these texts as agents who destabilize the material and psychic life of empire. Historians and postcolonialists agree that censorship, paranoia, and violence defined British rule over India between 1857 and 1947, yet they overlook the everyday life of empire. The nature essay’s peculiar synthesis of humour and science grants surprising insights into how colonial agents understood themselves as Raj hegemony shifted into its final stages. As the nature essay’s colonized people and animals thwart the daily work of empire, they also reveal the colonial class’ failure to confront its anxieties about the sahib’s political and epistemic stability as a rational, post-Enlightenment agent destined to master the colony.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 55-70
Author(s):  
Katharina Voss ◽  

This article studies the private enforcement conducted in Visita v Booking from the perspective of the interaction between public and private enforcement of competition law. This case concerned the question whether the narrow MFN clauses maintained by Booking were contrary to Article 101 TFEU and could therefore be prohibited by a Swedish court. The focus of this article is placed on the assessment carried out by the Swedish courts to determine whether the MFN clauses were restrictive of competition by effect and on the standard of proof attached to the claimant in this regard. With regard to the interaction between public and private enforcement, Visita v. Booking is viewed as an illustration of the increased complexity of competition policy, in particular were novel practices are at issue


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Bleijenberg ◽  
Noëlle Aarts ◽  
Reint Jan Renes

A comparative case study into the meaning of conversations between citizens and government on the course and outcome of local participation processes Although the importance of conversations for citizen participation is widely recognized, there is still little insight into the meaning of conversations for participatory processes. This comparative case study provides insight into the discursive patterns that characterize the conversations between citizens, civil servants and other stakeholders in two participatory processes in different municipalities. Our framing-analysis shows how different discursive patterns develop in interaction and how these patterns effect the course and outcome in both participation processes. The results provide insight in how experiences of previous events influence the discursive patterns that participants construct in interaction. It is concluded that in both cases not the nature of the issue, but the way it was discussed and how participants framed this was crucial for the course and outcome of the participation process.


Author(s):  
Rosemary Stott

This chapter examines the relocation, transition, and appropriation of the Spaghetti Western in a hitherto under-researched context: the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), prior to its unification with the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) in 1990. It explores the selection, distribution and reception of Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era una volta il West, Sergio Leone, 1968) in the German Democratic Republic as a case study of how international cultural transfer causes objects of cultural production to be repositioned as they enter a new reception context. It also examines the ideological, economic, and sociological concerns underpinning the decisions of those who facilitated the movement of film across the political, cultural, and linguistic boundaries of nation states. In East Germany, the facilitators involved in the selection, censorship, dubbing, and promotion of films were mainly government administrators rather than film business professionals, because film was a state-controlled industry. The chapter focuses on the ‘official’ reception of the film on the basis of available censorship protocols and government policy papers, as well as print media sources.


Author(s):  
Barton Byg

This chapter focuses on the three major themes that have helped make the integration between East and West German documentary filmmakers successful and have contributed new strengths to German independent documentary as a productive and innovative enterprise. It first illustrates the phenomenon of collaboration between filmmakers from both East and West Germany, which preceded the fall of the Berlin Wall and provides the basis for unique accomplishments in documentary. Then, partly based on these East–West collaborations, it discuss examples of German documentary's frequent explorations of non-European topics, which challenge the clear separation of European and non-European in both politics and film art. Here, the film collaborations between Helga Reidemeister and Lars Barthel will serve as a case study. Finally, also as a result of decades of experimentation with the nature of the film medium's presentation of ‘reality’, ‘history’, and the individual human subject, Thomas Heise's German ‘portrait film’ Barluschke (1997) is explored as an example of this defining quality of independent German documentary filmmaking in the context of the post-Cold War.


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