Against All Odds? A Discourse Network Analysis of the Political Debate About the German Passenger Car Toll Act

Bibliographic Data

ID6263136
AuthorsKatja Demler (0009-0002-6992-4001, Saarland University, corresponding author), Stefanie Thurm (0000-0001-9329-2847, Saarland University)
Year2025
Volume34
Issue2
Pages352-376
Publication date2025-04-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGerman Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0964-4008 • E-ISSN: 1743-8993
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09644008.2023.2288021
OpenAlexW4389239892
LanguageEN
References cited23

In this article, we analyse the policy process of the German passenger Car Toll Act in Germany by means of a discourse network analysis. The Car Toll Act is particularly interesting as a ‘least-likely case’ for analysing a successful policy adoption as it was highly unpopular and faced massive criticism not only among the opposition but also among the government itself. To contribute to the understanding of the policy process behind such an unlikely policy, we analyse the reporting of two German quality newspapers, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, by means of qualitative content analysis. Based on a total number of 329 articles, we examine the discursive structures of political demands for and rejections of the passenger Car Toll Act in the media public sphere between July 2013 and October 2014. Our findings provide novel evidence on the importance of political discourse in the process leading to the adoption of unpopular policies, indicating that the combination of institutional leverage (coalition agreement and office) and discursive persistence can lead to policy change without clear majorities. DISCLOSURE STATEMENTNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 However, due to the connection to ecological and social questions, this has been changing in recent years.2 The CSU (Christian Social Union) operates only in Bavaria, while its bigger sister party CDU (Christian Democratic Union) operates in all other 15 federal states of Germany. At the federal level, the CSU forms a common faction in the Bundestag with the CDU (Union Faction CDU/CSU).3 The term ‘foreigner toll’ is misleading from certain points of view. What is meant by a charge for foreigners or a foreigner toll is that, regardless of the driver of the car, only cars with non-German registration should bear the cost of the toll.4 Politbarometer data shows that during the year 2014, about 50 percent of respondents were opposed to the car toll and equally 50 percent were in favor of the project. Moreover, 57 percent of respondents considered the policy to be rather unimportant or not important at all (Jung, Schroth, and Wolf Citation2015).5 The terms story-line (introduced above) on the one hand and frame on the other hand reference similar concepts; however, they have different epistemological underpinnings. While the concept of framing goes back to a cognitive research tradition inspired strongly by works of Ervin Goffman (Citation1974), the concept of story-lines has its roots in critical approaches in line with Habermas, Foucault, and Bourdieu (s. for example Hajer Citation1995). Even though we make use of the concept of discourse coalitions (according to Hajer), besides that we keep to the terminology of framing, as we find its ontological base to be more in line with the methodology of DNA.6 Both newspapers are among the highest-circulation quality media in Germany, which can be ideologically located in the center-right and center-left. This selection provides the best possible representation of the discourse in Germany. We analyze newspaper articles in order to map the discourse as fully as possible. By choosing this medium, we can also include statements from experts, scientists, journalists and the private and third sector in the analysis.7 We divided the study period according to the three discourse phases: The election campaign, the discussion of the coalition agreement, and the presentation of the final concept.8 The large difference in the number of identified articles between the two newspapers results from the severely limited search options in the archive of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In contrast to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, it was not possible to filter by minimum article length and to specify that the term "PKW-Maut" must appear in the first 100 words of the article.9 The Java software Discourse Network Analyzer (DNA) is a qualitative content analysis tool with network export facilities. You import text files and annotate statements that persons or organizations make, and the program will return network matrices of actors connected by shared concepts. It was created by Philip Leifeld and can be downloaded as freeware from Github.com10 Only institutions that could not be assigned to a party were included in the Political Institution category. For example, the Federal Ministry of Transport was assigned to the CSU since the party provided the relevant minister at that time, but the Federal-State Commission (Bund-Länder-Kommission) was assigned to Political Institutions.11 For a closer look at the codebook, see Appendix.12 Visone is a software for the visual creation, transformation, exploration, analysis and representation of network data, developed by the University of Konstanz.13 Changing the node centrality degree to a lower value would make the category ‘EU legality’ visible again. Thus, the category has not disappeared entirely from the discourse, as can be seen in Figure 5, but it has become less central and can therefore no longer be found in Figure 12.14 Reference to a representative survey of the public would have been preferable in order to understand the public salience of the issue. Due to the lack of consistent data, the media presence of the topic serves as an indication of the development of salience among the population. As research has shown, the media agenda is highly correlated with the public agenda (Luo et al. Citation2019).15 Reading aid: The dots (nodes) stand for the respective actors. The green lines represent the edges and stand for common frames of two actors. The thicker the edge, the more frames the two actors share. The further an actor is mapped in the middle, the more central they are for the network. This means that he or she is connected to a particularly large number of other actors or is involved in a particularly large number of discourse coalitions and therefore has a high level of power in the overall network.16 Reading aid: As in the one-mode networks, the dots (nodes) stand for the respective actors. The gray rectangles represent the most central frames. The size of the dots and rectangles increases with increasing centrality to the network. The green lines map the edges that represent an actor's agreement to a frame. The red lines map the edges that represent an actor's disagreement with a frame. The thicker the edge, the more times an actor has represented the frame (agreeing or disagreeing depending on the color of the edge).Additional informationNotes on contributorsKatja DemlerKatja Demler has studied Social Sciences and Chemistry at the University of Kaiserslautern where she received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. She is currently working at the Chair of Political Science with a focus on Comparative European Studies (Prof. Dr. Georg Wenzelburger) at the Saarland University in Saarbrücken.Stefanie ThurmStefanie Thurm has studied Social Sciences with a focus on political science in Trier and in Kaiserslautern where she received her Master’s degree. She is currently working at the Chair of Political Science with a focus on Comparative European Studies (Prof. Dr. Georg Wenzelburger) at the Saarland University in Saarbrücken

Criticism · Democracy · Economics · European union · German · International trade · Leverage (statistics · Opposition (politics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social Democratic Party · Sociology · Toll · History · Law · Policy Transfer and Learning · Political Influence and Corporate Strategies · Public Administration · Public Administration and Political Analysis

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