Berlin Katrin Göring-Eckardt was enthusiastic. The idea of a parliamentary poet is a “great suggestion”, cheered the Bundestag Vice-President. Poetry could help “open a new discursive space between parliament and living language”, enthused the Green politician about the initiative of some writers.
When the budget politicians discuss the supplementary budget for 2021 in the Bundestag on Wednesday, they will not only bring a 60 billion euro climate reserve off the ground. You will also approve hundreds of new jobs for your own coalition after it created almost 200 new ones in December. Most recently in coalition circles there was talk that the supplementary budget could add up to another 500 jobs.
Even if it were a little less in the end, the traffic light coalition would still be the largest federal government of all time: whether it was the number of ministries, the number of parliamentary state secretaries, the number of civil servants or the number of management staff in the ministries – never was the power apparatus of a federal government is larger. And never since reunification have there been so many civil servants in the federal ministries.
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“The increase in jobs is not primarily justified on a factual basis, but simply a result of the good budget situation since 2015,” says administrative expert René Geißler from the TH Wildau. But whether all the new jobs lead to better administration is questionable. Economists like Justus Haucap tend to assume that too much administrative staff leads to more bureaucracy: “The growing number of positions usually creates additional participation rights and obligations and reporting obligations that often paralyze rather than accelerate.”
Bad example: the Navy in Singapore
The British colonial official Cyril Northcote Parkinson described this effect decades ago. A law named after him says that administrative apparatuses have a bad habit of bloating. But the more people sit together in an agency, the more time they need to manage themselves, says Parkinson. As an example, he cited the Navy in Singapore: in 1914 around 146,000 officers worked there for the Navy, for which 2,000 officials were responsible. 14 years later there were almost a third fewer ship officers, but 78 percent more officials.
The bureaucratic apparatus in the federal ministries is expanding not quite as strongly, but quite abundantly. While around 17,000 civil servants were still working in the federal departments in 2010, there will be more than 27,000 next year – an increase of 59 percent in twelve years. And the highest level since reunification, as the Federal Ministry of Finance already calculated in an internal presentation two years ago.
The reasons for the increase in staff are complex. In some areas such as climate policy, financial or money laundering supervision, more civil servants are undoubtedly needed because the issues have become more important or the challenges have become more complex. However, at the same time there was never any downsizing in the administrative areas that are less important.
That also has to do with civil service law. Civil servants below the department head level cannot simply be dismissed or retired. At the same time, officials say they are reluctant to go digital because it would put their own jobs at risk. And unlike in the economy, this persistence is often successful due to a lack of economic pressure.
However, party-political reasons also play a role in the increase in jobs. “Often, positions are filled or promoted shortly before the legislature expires,” says administrative expert Geißler. This is the often-cited “Operation Evening Sun”, in which the governing parties quickly provide party friends with lucrative civil servant jobs shortly before the next election – regardless of their political affiliation. At the same time, each newly elected federal government traditionally treats itself to a number of new posts after taking office. “I doubt all of this is necessary, but the growth of bureaucracy is not new,” says economist Haucap.
The traffic light makes special use of these bureaucratic practices. The new government created a completely new ministry in the form of the Federal Ministry of Construction. Now there are 16 departments including the Chancellery. But that alone does not explain why the number of parliamentary state secretaries under the traffic light coalition rises from 34 to 37 and that of civil servants from 31 to 37 – and thus to historic highs in each case.
New posts for state secretaries, whatever the reason
A key reason for this: for the first time in decades, there are no longer just two, but three parties with government responsibility. And among them are the Greens and the FDP who have not belonged to any government for a long time. And who join the new ministries with a correspondingly large number of their own staff.
Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens) has treated himself to a new State Secretary who coordinates the work of the Vice Chancellery. That’s not new. What is new, however, is that Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) has retained the post of State Secretary, who coordinated the Vice Chancellery for the then Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the finance department in the last electoral term. The traces can also be seen in other ministries where the Vice Chancellery was once located. Whenever the Vice Chancellery moved on, the jobs stayed in the old house.
Transport Minister Volker Wissing will also have an additional State Secretary. Since the FDP politician is no longer just minister for transport, but also for digital affairs, a new post of state secretary will be created in his department to deal with the issue of mobility data. Only Wissing is not the strong digital minister at all, as it was originally planned. All responsibilities for the economic-political aspects of digitization remain with the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The new state secretary was there for Wissing anyway.
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens), who can now rely on the expertise of three State Secretaries who are called “State Ministers” in the Foreign Office, will also get a new position. Baerbock’s predecessor Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) wanted to install a third minister of state. Baerbock has now pushed through the position because she has brought responsibility for international climate policy into her house.
Allegedly there is an “unavoidable need”
The fact that the Federal Foreign Office has actually been losing importance for years is apparently irrelevant. The Ministry of the Environment, which lost responsibility for international climate policy, has meanwhile increased the number of state secretaries from one to two. Reason here: consumer protection was added as a new responsibility in the traffic light government.
And so the administrative apparatus is expanding more and more, above all the management staff in which politics is coordinated. According to Geißler’s calculations, the number of employees on the management staff rose by 20 percent between 2016 and 2021. There are no evaluations for the traffic light yet, but the trend is clearly continuing, as the finance and economics ministries show. “There is no automatism between the number of positions and the necessary management positions,” says Geissler. In other words: there could be more Indians without there being many more chiefs.
But since the positions on the management level are hierarchically located high up in a department, the number of highly paid civil servant positions of the so-called “salary level B” is growing. Between 2016 and 2021 alone, there were 19 percent more such highly paid administrative jobs, as Geißler’s calculations show. This trend also continues with the traffic light: of the 176 positions that the traffic light decided in December, 41 were B positions.
The punch line: The new positions were created retrospectively for the year 2021, allegedly because there was an “unavoidable need” that could not wait until the next federal budget was announced, as it was said in a letter in mid-December in the most beautiful bureaucratic German. As a precaution, the Federal Government did not explain why there is an “unavoidable need” for a year that had almost expired.
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