Updated System Supporting Regional Development in Germany

The long-term trajectory of the German regional policy is formed by the terms of overcoming the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. The article discusses in this context the comprehensive all-German system for financing structurally weak regions, provides information on specific programs in 2020–2021, and also shows the connection with European instruments for financing regional policy in 2021–2027. The restructuring of this system of support measures was designed to improve the situation in underdeveloped territories and to help reduce differences in the conditions of recent challenges in technology, energy, and ecology. It is determined that Germany continues to be characterized by the differentiation in terms of economic potential between the East and West of the country. The paper demonstrates that the pandemic only highlighted the demands for the development of new mechanisms and a more active regional policy. It is emphasized that all eligible regions in the country now have access to more than 20 funding programs that were previously restricted to the regions of East Germany. It is determined that the streamlining of such measures is clearly only an auxiliary function in the public administration system and is aimed, first of all, at better coordination of existing instruments. Efficiency limitations are also the continuing autonomy of many programs, the possibility of excessive competition from now all underdeveloped regions of Germany for financial resources.

Classification of Structurally Weak Rural Regions: Application of a Rural Development Index for Austria and Portugal

This paper aims to analyse to what extent the level and dynamics of development of rural regions located in two firmly different countries, Austria and Portugal, differ. In order to do this, an index to measure the ‘structural strength’ of rural regions was created. This index is a more holistic measure of socio-economic development than the traditional GDP per capita. After the identification of structurally weak regions in both Austria and Portugal, the paper compares them in the context of challenges faced by such regions.

The Dialectical Identity of Eastern Germans

Germans have now been unified for thirty years, longer than they had been separated by concrete barriers, yet the Wall in their respective heads has persisted. Unequal wages, a lack of investment in structurally weak regions, and ongoing western elite domination continue to fuel Eastern perceptions of second-class citizenship, despite significant shifts in the fates of key social groups who initially saw themselves as the “winners” and losers” of unification. This article considers the dialectical identities of four groups whose collective opportunity structures have been dramatically reconfigured since 1990: eastern intellectuals and dissidents; working women and mothers; eastern youth; and middle-aged men. It argues that the two groups counted among the immediate winners of unification—dissidents and men—have traded places over the last three decades with the two strata counted among unity’s core losers, women and youth. It also testifies to fundamental, albeit rarely noted changes that have taken hold with regard to the identities of western Germans across thirty years of unification.

Regional Ambassadors – An Innovative Element for the Development of Rural Areas?

Rural regions in Austria have been under increasing pressure for change in the last decades. On a regional level, varying development patterns of shrinkage and growth arise alongside economic, demographic and social parameters. In this paper, regional ambassador concepts will be explicated as a new instrument of regional development. Additionally, potential positive impacts of these approaches on the problems faced by rural, structurally weak regions will be highlighted. Notable advantages of these approaches are network and feedback effects between stakeholders. These, in turn, are capable of improving the economic and social situation in those regions. However, these measures require a high degree of control capacities which structurally weak areas often lack.

Analysing Changes in Discursive Constructions of Rural Areas in the Context of Demographic Change. Towards Counterpoints in the Dominant Discourse on “Dying Villages”

Empirically, this article is based on a research project on rural municipalities in structurally weak regions of Germany suffering from demographic change and attempting to find ways out of their crisis situation through novel approaches in community development. The example of the village of Treptitz in Saxony, which was investigated using an ethnographic discourse analysis, demonstrated that a small-scale discourse (of restricted spatial range) developed in the context of its innovative sewage works and biogas project. There, commonly shared knowledge could establish a context in which the village is considered an ingenious, socially intact, resolute and thus vibrant village; a village that actively pursues its prospects for the future. This small-scale discourse defies the wider demographic discourse, which, as the article shows, focuses primarily on “dying villages.”For the conceptualisation of the empirical observations, the article is based on the assumption that it is in communications and in public discourses – in particular specific recurrent contents on rural areas and demographic change – that specific knowledge elements and reality constructions of rural areas emerge and stabilise within society. This assumption includes the idea that when the content of public discourses on rural areas change, for example through small-scale discursive counterpoints, it is possible for new knowledge elements and new constructions of reality to develop. Against this background, the approach of a (new) discursive construction of spaces is selected as theoretical starting point for the analysis. By referring to the communicative-constructivism approach and by integrating the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse, it is perfectly suited for theoretically spelling out changing discursive constructions of rural areas in the context of demographic change.

Wirtschaftswachstum und „neuer Arbeitsmarkt“ in Deutschland

Economic growth and the “new labor market” in Germany. The persistent high level of unemployment in Germany is usually blamed on the country’s inflexible labor market. This article attempts to show that in Germany - as in comparable countries - employment is primarily determined by economic growth. However, the growth of the German economy has been lagging behind the European average for some time. The article briefly discusses why this has been the case. The study contradicts the widely held theory that the German labor market restricts economic growth, and instead advances the proposition that the German labor market has changed to such an extent over the past few years, that the term “new labor market” is indeed warranted. This “new labor market” is regionally differentiated, as will be shown at the hand of “Bundesländer” (Nuts I regions). In particular, differences emerge between East and West Germany, but economically successful regions (Baden-Württemberg) with low unemployment levels also differ from structurally weak regions (Lower Saxony) with regards to the “new labor market”.

Changing Western German Internal Migration Systems during the Second Half of the 1980s

The slow downward trend toward greater spatial deconcentration in West Germany during the time period 1970 to 1984 shifted back toward concentration from 1985 and through 1988. This ‘swing back’ occurred over only a three-year period. Regional labor-market changes appear to be the only factor able to cause such an abrupt shift to concentration, suggesting the importance of the regional restructuring hypothesis as an explanation. Changing internal migration patterns by two age-groups, 25–29 and 30–49, were responsible for the shift. A reduction of net in-migration to intermediate-sized regions with favorable structures as well as to small-sized rural regions with unfavorable structures, in the northern and central parts of the country, caused the shift. The concentration trend remained unaltered during 1989, in spite of large transfers of population out of eastern and into western Germany, because these exchanges favored the large-sized, densely populated, structurally weak regions in the Ruhr-Rhine and the Saarland.