The Expulsion of the Smokers from Paradise – Analysis of the German Non-Smokers Protection Legislation by the Multiple Streams Approach

„Why now?“ and „What has happened in the ‚paradise of smokers‘“?, the ZEIT (01.03.2007) asked regarding the rapidly proceeding non-smokers protection legislation in Germany. For decades all attempts to establish more restrictive laws had failed and then, surprisingly, within short time comparatively rigorous smoking bans were implemented – a paradigm shift from the ‘paradise of smokers’ to the ‘paradise of non-smokers’. Interestingly two coupling processes have to be distinguished (cp. Zohlnhöfer/Herweg 2012: 5) which were not located within the same political arena but on the two levels of the federal system: While the agenda-setting took place on the federal level, due to the coming into effect of the federalism reform I – that reallocated the legislative competences – the policy cycle was interrupted and the debate was transferred to the states, where finally the policy decisions were made. Moreover, the concept of ‚national mood‘, which is often difficult to operationalize and which was criticized by Zahariadis as „far too imprecise to be empirically useful by itself“ (Zahariadis 1995: 35) can be adopted beneficially in this case: Lots of small ‚puzzle pieces‘ – from court decisions on passive smoking to the demand for offers for non-smokers e.g. in hotels – draw together a comprehensive picture of the development since the 1970s. For the period of legislation the extensive media coverage proves that the political decision makers had the same perception of the public mood as the SPIEGEL (12.06.2006): “The zeitgeist is a non-smoker”. My work shows that the established theoretical approaches are not able to explain completely the German non-smokers protection legislation: for example Partisan and Veto Player Theory explain (mainly) the result, i.e. the content of the laws, but it remains unclear why the legislation process had started at all. This gap can be filled by the Multiple Streams Approach.