Explaining restrictive ART policies in Switzerland and Germany: similar processes - similar results?

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Assisted reproductive technology

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Explaining restrictive ART policies in Switzerland and Germany: similar processes - similar results?

1. Introduction (1)

The issue of assisted reproductive technology (ART) made its way on the political agenda in Switzerland and Germany in the early 1980s. Since then, both countries have adopted several pieces of legislation, first addressing questions related to in vitro fertilization and, more recently, regulating embryonic stem cell research. Both countries adopted very restrictive policies and strongly intervened into the field of (ART) (see Rothmayr and Serdult 2004, Rothmayr and Ramjoue 2004). As a result, doctors in both countries are not allowed to practice a considerable number of techniques permitted in other countries, such as preimplantation diagnosis or egg donation, and researchers are not permitted to practice therapeutic cloning or embryo research. A detailed comparison of the two countries shows that the goals, instruments and implementers differ somewhat, but that the policies in both cases operate with strong prohibitions and sanctions. Hence, we could speak of a similar policy style in both countries.

By taking the 'institution matter' hypotheses seriously, we could speculate that common institutional features might explain this similar policy style. Both countries are known for the consensual characteristics of their political system (Lijphart 1999). The institutional configuration, however, is different. Germany knows a parliamentary system (e.g. Schmidt 2003) and Switzerland combines direct democracy with a "directorial" governmental system (see e.g. Linder 1994, Kriesi 1998, Papodopoulos 2001). In addition, even though both countries systems might be characterized as functional federalism, there are important differences with respect to the power of the federated entities and their mode of participation on the federal level (e.g. Braun 2003). Despite these specific differences in institutional features, we can formulate the starting hypothesis that the consensual style of decision-making might contribute to explaining the convergence in policy content across the two countries.

However, one cannot explain policy choices by looking at institutional features alone (e.g. Scharpf 1997, Hammond and Butler 2003: 145); actor-based variables need to be taken into account as well. The policy-sector approach even goes one step further and argues, that "... policymaking in a particular sector will exhibit strong similarities, whatever its national context." (Freeman 1986: 485-486) Based on Lowi's idea of "policy determines politics" we could suppose that the nature of the policy problem leads to a similar actor constellation and a similar nature of conflicts in both countries. We could, therefore, as a second and competing starting hypothesis suppose that the policy style both countries have in common is mainly the result of similarities in actor structure and the nature of conflict.

Finally, the analysis of Swiss policy-making in general reveals that-besides the pressure of European integration -the solutions adopted by the two big neighbors France and Germany are often taken into account when discussing Swiss solutions. Even though Switzerland might occasionally be a forerunner in terms of policy innovation, other countries have often already addressed the problem, due to the rather slow process of decision-making in Switzerland, in particular if direct democratic decisions are involved, which was also the case with ART. We could therefore formulate a third hypothesis, namely that the similar policy style is the result of policy transfer mechanism (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000), i.e. that the similar Swiss policies result from "lesson drawing" from the neighbor to the north.

In order to discuss which of these three factors has the most explanatory power, the presentation of the two cases is organized as follows: first, we give a brief overview over the different stages of the decision-making processes in both countries since the beginning of the 1980s, then, the resulting policies of both countries are compared in order to reveal the similarities in terms of policy style. After the comparison of the policy content, we offer an explanation for the policy choices in each country. The article concludes by comparing the explanations for the two countries and addressing the three starting hypothe...

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