The Power of Ideas: Why Germany is so Different and What it Means for the World

Neoconservative thinking may have gone out of fashion in recent years, yet it provides important tools to understand what drives German foreign economic policy and thus helps to understand why Germany is so different when it comes to economic issues. This paper starts with a brief discussion of neoconservative thinking and a description of where Germany stands in the international debate and then moves on to the analysis of the causes and consequences of the country’s policy choices.