3. Research Design and Methodology
3.5 Data Sources and Methods of Analysis
After explaining the general analytic strategy, this section turns to the sources and methods of data analysis in the empirical case studies. It will give a general overview of the materials and sources for gathering the data needed to answer the empirical research question. The sources used can roughly be categorized as documents on the one hand, and interviews conducted by myself on the other.
Aspects of IL
Communicative/behavioural aspects
1) Exposing drawbacks of the policy status quo
2) Making consistent efforts to legitimize new policy principles (amended)
3) Engaging with reform opponents by framing their resistance as ‘problematic’ for societal welfare (amended)
4) Making efforts at political consensus-building to muster support for a particular reform (added)
Orientation/motivation aspect
Research Design and Methodology
3.5.1 Documents and Methods of Analysis
The first group of sources, documents, can be further classified as either primary or secondary sources. Primary documents included parliamentary documents (plenary protocols, draft bills, motions, commission reports),109 a variety of documents produced by individual members of the government (speeches, statements and biographical accounts) and ministries (ministerial declarations, policy draft papers, programmes, implementation schedules; communications by individual officials), and the government more generally (declarations on policy programmes, such as Agenda 2010, position papers on policy development and evaluation) as well as regular publications by ministries and other government agencies (e.g. Bundesagentur für Arbeit). This category also covered reports by commissions and working groups advising on or preparing input for reform legislation, internal communications of political parties, and policy statements, press declarations and publications by the social partners (especially by trade unions) and other policy stakeholders involved in the making or administration of policy (e.g. local government associations, sickness funds, health care providers). Regarding secondary sources, I consulted a combination of scholarly sources and press articles. The former consisted of research reports and working papers, academic journal articles, books and dissertations dealing with (aspects of) specific reform processes or with reform developments in German social policy (generally or concerning specific sectors). As for the latter, I drew on media coverage of policy developments and specific reform processes and relevant opinion articles in quality print media (such as the daily papers Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Frankfurter Rundschau, Handelsblatt and others; and the weeklies Die Zeit and Der SPIEGEL).
The aim of combining primary and secondary documents was to get a better overview of the development of policy proposals and relevant debates. Furthermore, both sources taken together provided an outline of the policy-making environment and the positions of relevant actors before the initiation of legislative processes by the government and the formal decision-making by parliament. While many of these primary and secondary documents served to gather information about the policy process in a general sense, those sources containing arguments of ministers, such as speeches, parliamentary proceedings and press interviews, were analysed more thoroughly. I selected sources, in which one could expect to find relevant arguments about policy failure and the legitimization (by stressing the necessity and appropriateness) of reforms. Texts produced by reformists themselves, and first and foremost those written or presented by the relevant minister, seemed a logical choice. For instance, I worked with a selection of available speeches (e.g. delivered in the context of a parliamentary debate or to a party audience), press interviews, articles written by ministers for newspapers and magazines; and, in the first case study, with a biographical account written after Minister Riester left office.110 The minister’s biography constituted a convenient source revealing his thoughts on his largest reform project before, during and after the reform process. Despite its obvious limitations (bibliographical accounts seldom offer
109
These were accessed via the online legislative databases of the Bundestag (http://www.bundestag.de), but I also consulted the relevant collections of ‘legislative documentation’ (Gesetzesdokumentationen) in the Bundestag Parliamentary Archive in Berlin.
110 I do not claim that the selected texts are comparable in all respects, since they vary considerably in length, audience and
purpose. However, looking at materials written for different contexts and at different points in time during a reform process should ensure a fairly good representation of the reformists’ approach to justify and legitimize reform proposals vis-à-vis the political arena and the public.
Chapter 3
neat answers to the particular questions of an analyst), it disclosed the perceptions of a central actor on the reform process, in a similar fashion to those explored in the expert interviews.111 Regarding the other two ministers, Clement and Seehofer, biographical accounts were not available and neither did they consent to being interviewed, which necessitated consulting alternative sources and interviewees (but see Section 3.5.2 below).
The analytical method performed on this selection of documents is relatively straightforward and can be described as qualitative content analysis. In a first reading of the texts, documents were pre-structured according to functional criteria (such as introduction, presentation of policy goals and instruments and explication of the state of the policy sector). Next, passages containing relevant information surrounding the issue of reform were identified, classified, and recorded using the indicators belonging to the categories derived from the IL aspects. In this fashion, whole sentences or phrases within sentences were turned into evidence of pre-defined indicators and could (after their translation into English) be included as direct or indirect citations in the case study reports.
3.5.2 Interview Accounts and Methods of Analysis
Alongside the study of documents, I chose interviews as my second important data source. Despite the time-consuming and costly character of this method of data collection, I considered it a necessary complement to the analysis of textual material. The goal was to collect perceptions and views of a diverse range of individuals holding different positions in various organizations who had been involved either as direct participants in or close observers of political processes.112 I considered these individuals to be an asset both for gathering factual information and personal views and experiences, and to reveal different viewpoints on the same social policy processes. For the study as a whole, I collected data based on conversations and other sorts of communication with more than thirty individuals; most of whom I met in the context of face-to-face interviews. The motive behind conducting these interviews was to reach a balanced understanding of reform processes, and to make a satisfactory assessment of the relative influence of strategies associated with IL. More specifically, the interviews were designed to generate first-hand knowledge about the course of the reform process, the strategies used by reformists, the leadership style of the minister, how it came to the acceptance of reforms and what factors may have helped reformists to push through reforms. The individuals to be interviewed included expert observers of policy development and policy-making, i.e. social policy specialists from private and public research bodies, as well as from universities. In addition, I aimed to consult actors involved in the policy process, such as parliamentarians specializing in social policy issues, trade union officials, and representatives of other stakeholders and interest groups.
The first case was based on nine interviews in total, eight of which were conducted in person and one via e-mail. For the Hartz- IV case, the count was ten genuine interviews, two telephone interviews and one communication via e-mail. Finally, for the health care case, thirteen face-to- face interviews were held. The style of the interviews was half-structured, rather than non- structured, in order to ensure that important points were covered and to obtain comparable
111 Although former minister Riester was not available for an interview on his pension reform project, the availability of his
biography made up for this to some extent. Given his account, I learned about his ideas on the need for reform and breaking away from the policy status-quo, and his views on policy-making and political power defining his political style.
112
Research Design and Methodology
accounts of answers. In conducting the conversations, I made use of an interview schedule that covered the following topics and could be adapted for each case and interviewee if necessary: interviewees’ perceptions concerning the process in general, the main actors in favour of and against the reform proposals, strategies followed by those who advocated the reform (consisting of a communicative strategy related to IL, and two strategies corresponding to the two alternative explanations), reasons for the increase in reform acceptance and factors that may have facilitated eventual reform adoption. Questions were pre-formulated based on the topics and, where necessary, followed up by probing questions.
Regarding the analysis of interview material, I worked with transcripts of the conversations that covered the main points made by the interviewee rather than complete word protocols. As with documents, I applied qualitative content analysis to the transcripts. By comparing and contrasting the accounts with the help of an analytical grid, I recorded relevant views, arguments, and other sorts of background information that were to appear as direct or indirect citations in the various case study reports. Since the great majority of interviewees preferred anonymity, the Appendix lists them by their position and organizational affiliation only. In order to ensure both accuracy and reliability of the three analyses of complex reform processes, the finished analyses were sent to those interviewees who had provided valuable input for writing them, as well as to the three key politicians concerned, Riester, Clement, and Seehofer, who had not been interviewed. The reactions received were positive and affirmative with regard to the scope and depth of the analysis. Those responding to my request found their views and opinions accurately represented and gave positive comments about the thoroughness of the analyses. Former Minister Wolfgang Clement personally endorsed and welcomed the analysis of the Hartz IV reform.113
3.5.3 Organisation of Cases and Data Collection
Figure 3, which serves as a heuristic device, illustrates the steps followed in organizing data collection and analysis in the context of the first two cases. The list of steps gives an impression of what the case approach entailed in terms of data collection and analysis, excluding the techniques used to conduct the actual analysis of the material collected. Concerning the third case, Step 1 did not apply since the time frame was already defined by the period in office of the minister chosen. Furthermore, the focus in this case lay more on re-constructing the politics surrounding the reforms, while paying attention to whether the minister’s role reflected aspects of IL, to evaluate the initial choice of the minister as presumed ideational leader, and the assessment of reform outcomes (see Section 2.2. above and Chapter 7).
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Chapter 3
Figure 3.3: Case Study Organization
3.6 Conclusion
To conclude, this chapter has outlined and motivated the methodological choices I have made in this project. It has presented a variant of the case study method, the multiple case study, as a suitable research design to assess the concept of IL, searching for the theorized links between IL and the adoption of path-breaking social policy reforms. Next, it has defined the unit of analysis and the parameters of the case study, including the rationale for using a multiple case design and the analytic strategies used to evaluate the IL hypothesis. The main empirical question is to what extent ideational leadership can be observed in the reform processes, and how it relates to the adoption of structural reforms. Within the design, each case fulfils a distinct function and has a slightly different emphasis. The first case study primarily serves to check whether evidence of IL can be found in the empirical material at all. The second case is meant to confirm the conclusions about the plausibility of IL and to look at its effects on structural reform, as far as the data allows conclusions about them. In the third and final cases, the focus lies on looking at whether the reverse relationship holds, i.e. whether a presumed ideational leader also manages to adopt structural reforms and whether a selection on reputation-based criteria can be confirmed by (some of the) aspects of IL used in the first two case studies. Moreover, I have presented an operationalization of the main concepts, IL and structural reform, capturing the former in five categories of actors’ communicative and consensus-seeking behaviour as well as motivation, and the latter in three structural dimensions of policy (financing, benefits and regulation). This was followed by reporting the motives for and the results of a pilot case study, explaining how this resulted in a fine-tuning of the initial theoretical framework. The chapter ended by presenting the study’s main sources, documents and semi-structured interviews; my approach to data collection; and as a way to making sense of written and interview data, the analytic method of qualitative content analysis.
Preparation and Data Collection:
Step 1: Selecting a time frame of the reform process for the analysis Step 2: Getting an overall picture of the main actors in the reform process and their initial policy positions
Step 3: Selecting a mix of documents
Step 4: Selecting interviewees and conducting interviews Analysis:
Step 5: Performing text analysis using pre-defined indicators
Step 6: Comparing and contrasting interview accounts using an analytic grid
Step 7: Evaluating plausibility of alternative explanations with the help of both sources
Step 8: Combining information from Steps 5 through 7 to draw
conclusions on presence and effects of IL relative to alternative explanations
Step 9: Evaluating whether reform outcomes were structural in character (this replaces Steps 7 and 8 in Case 3)