The Unexpected Curse: How Germany’s ‘Decision Trap’ Outperformed France’s Dirigisme

Why did a social investment turn—emphasizing welfare reforms in education, childcare, and labor market activation—fail to occur in France as it did in Germany? To explain differences in welfare reforms, the comparative public policy scholarship has highlighted the role of programmatic elites in designing and advocating for reforms. However, limited attention has been paid to how macropolitical institutions mediate the ability of these elites to push their agendas forward. This article argues that macropolitical institutions shape the dominant mode of coordination between rival programmatic elites, significantly influencing the nature of enacted reforms. Using a comparative analysis of social investment reforms in the majoritarian democracy of France and the consensus democracy of Germany, this study draws on extensive document analysis and semi-structured interviews with economic and social policy elites. Preliminary findings reveal a persistent structural subordination of social goals to economic objectives in both regimes, but highlight how the partisan nature of ministerial politics only at stake in consensus democracies moderates this trend. These results underscore the importance of considering polity arrangements as mediating variables in actor-centred institutional analyses and offer insights on the extent to which different governance structures may be able to accommodate competing policy priorities.