Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)

Completed research project

The project analysed debates and decisions regarding subsidies as an instrument of coping with economic structural change in West Germany. It focussed on the period from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, during which overall economic growth problems and industrial adjustment crises transformed structural policy into a central field of politics (though one only examined selectively in historical research) with numerous protagonists – alongside the federal government, the individual states and the European Community, also enterprises and trade unions as well as science and the media. By understanding subsidies justified by structural policy as an expression of economic-political problem perception and the result of politico-societal negotiating processes, a bridge is to be built between economic history and general contemporary history.