Interest Groups and the Great Recession: The Strategical Framing of the Crisis

The paper examines the strategic framing of the crisis 2007ff. by interest groups, focusing on business organizations and trade unions. Crises are societal decision situations, i.e. actors feel (time) pressure to act in order to restore the functioning of an existing institutional set. Interest groups feel different needs (not only) in times of crisis: they must ensure that their members trust their competencies in solving the crisis; they need to frame the crisis according to their interests and vice versa; they may need to proof their own relevance in a system of industrial relations against claims of their opponents. Investigating press releases (understood as strategical interventions in the public sphere) and expert interviews, this paper analyzes how these different problems were targeted by German social partners (construction sector, metal sector, and umbrella organizations). In other words, the framing of the crisis by German social partners is explained by underlying organizational logics of membership, of effective implementation and of goal formation.