Investigation of the mechanism of decay reactions with single bond breaking and calculation of their velocity constants on the basis of quantum chemical and statistical methods - that's quite a complex topic to write about, isn't it? Well, someone wanted to write her doctoral dissertation about it, in the field of chemical physics, in 1986. Who? A certain Angela Merkel, whom some of you might also know as the current Chancellor of Germany [1].

It's fairly technical stuff and a good understanding of how science works and treats evidence is a prerequisite for reading it - and was, of course, needed for writing it, too. But how did this knowledge master the transition from science to politics? How is evidence treated in German politics today, by those who should know, the scientists-turned-politicians, the MDs-by-profession? And where, in the still fairly new German cabinet do we find these?

A quick list of the German ministers and their profession(ordered: name - party-affiliation - ministry - education/degree - topic of degree's thesis):

• Guido Westerwelle - Free Democrats (FDP)- Minister of Foreign Affairs - Dr. jur. - Party law and political youth organisations [2]
• Thomas de Maizière - Christian Democrats (CDU) - Minister of the Interior - Dr. jur. - Informal practices in the German cartel office [3]
• Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger - Free Democrats (FDP) - Minister of Justice - Second Staatsexamen in law - n/a [4]
• Wolfgang Schäuble - Christian Democrats (CDU) - Minister of Finance - Dr. jur. - Certified public accountants in employment law [5]
• Rainer Brüderle - Free Democrats (FDP) - Minister of Economics and Technology - Diplom in Economics - n/a [6]
• Franz Josef Jung - Christian Democrats (CDU) - Minister of Labour and Social Affairs - Dr. jur. - Regional Planning in Hesse [7]
• Ilse Aigner - Christian Social Union (CSU) [8] - Minister of Food, Agriculture. and Consumer Protection - Electrical engineer [9] - n/a
• Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg - Christian Social Union (CSU) - Minister of Defence - Dr. jur. (summa cum laude) - Comparison of US and European constitutional evolution [10]
• Ursula von der Leyen - Christian Democrats (CDU) - Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth - Dr. med. - CRP in the diagnostics of amniotic infection syndrome [11]
• Philipp Rösler - Free Democrats (FDP) - Minister of Health - Dr. med. - Prophylaxis against pre-operative Atrial fibrillation within the scope of coronary bypass operations [12]
• Peter Ramsauer - Christian Social Union (CSU) - Minister of Transport, Building, and Urban Affairs - Dr. oec. publ. - Economic aims and effects of local government reform in Bavaria [13]
• Norbert Röttgen - Christian Democrats (CDU) - Minister of Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety - Dr. jur. - Argumentation of the European Court of Justice [14]
• Annette Schavan - Christian Democrats (CDU) - Minister of Education and Research - Dr. phil. - A review of studies on the development of the conscience [15]
• Dirk Niebel - Free Democrats (FDP) - Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development - Diplom-Verwaltungswirt (FH) [16] - n/a [17]
• Ronald Pofalla - Christian Democrats (CDU) - Chief of the Chancellery - Diplom-Social Pedagogue (FH) [18] and Second Staatsexamen in law - n/a

So there are only a handful of university degrees that actually required some research, data-collection, analysis, and everything. So, after a quick overview on (not) evidence-based voting by means of one certain issue (heroin prescription), let's take a closer look at how those politicians who sport such a "research" degree (Angela Merkel, Philipp Rösler, and Ursula von der Leyen) have fared so far regarding evidence-based politics.

Heroin-therapy

All but three of the current ministers (Rösler, von der Leyen and de Maizière) were MPs during the last legislative period. In July of this year, the German Parliament Bundestag voted on the introduction of a heroin distribution programme for the hard core of addicted, long-term users, that have failed previous attempts at detoxification. This programme had a precursor in some half-dozen model programmes in different German cities, that were adequately covered by corollary studies [19]. The patients would receive synthetic heroin (diacetylmorphine), be supervised while giving themselves the injections, and be looked after by social workers. The model programmes were huge successes, but it took over 20 years to introduce the final bill to the Bundestag. Unsurprisingly, after stalling for so many years, the CDU/CSU-fraction was unrelenting and the law passed with only 11 votes from their side, while 196 CDU/CSU MPs voted against it. So how did the new ministers vote then?

pro: Niebel (FDP)

contra: Jung (CDU), Schavan (CDU), Aigner (CSU), Ramsauer(CSU), Pofalla (CDU), Röttgen (CDU)

did not vote ( abstention!): Brüderle (FDP), Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (FDP), Westerwelle (FDP), zu Guttenberg (CSU), Merkel (CDU), Schäuble (CDU)

not MP: de Maizière, Rösler, von der Leyen

The non-votes from zu Guttenberg, Merkel and Schäuble can be explained by either being for the law, but not wanting to upset the rest of their respective parties, or, more likely, wanting to abstain from voting on this controversial topic while being part of the government (although Jung, Aigner and Schavan all were part of the last cabinet as well and voted against the law).
The non-votes from the FDP-MPs Brüderle, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger and Westerwelle are more problematic, as roughly three quarters of all FDP-MPs voted for the law. So it seems that in these three cases, ideology trumped the evidence (and, it could be said, human decency and compassion for drug users who have no other perspective).
(Voting results taken from the German-language abgeordnetenwatch.de.)

Philipp Rösler

Philipp Rösler was, until recently, the Minister of Economics, Labour and Transport in the State of Lower Saxony. His pet project on the federal level is the reform of the health care system from the currentuniversal multi-payer system that is paid for in equal parts by employers and employees; Rösler's plan apparently includes a freeze on the contributions from employers and a the introduction of a per capita premium, instead of the now-current percentage of income. So the new plan would ease the burden on those with higher incomes and the employers while lower income households will pay more of their income on health care; in certain cases (people below a certain minimum income), the state will need to subsidise the health plan. This has already drawn protests from the opposition, certain medical associations, and, last but not least, the coalition partner CSU. The latest development is the appointment of a panel to decide on reform of the German health care system; said panel will begin work in early 2010. The future will show, whether these experts will recommend evidence-based policies and whether or not Rösler will implement them.

Ursula von der Leyen

If you ask some of the German "digital natives" about his opinion on Ursula von der Leyen, chances are he will either run screaming into the woods or give a fairly derisive answer in which he calls her "Zensursula" (a portmanteau from the German word "Zensur", meaning censorship, and her given name). Why is that? Because she was the minister responsible for pushing mandatory internet blockage legislation (read: internet censorship) against child pornography during the last election cycle.





Netizens, the still fairly fresh German Pirate Party, the information privacy ombudsmen on the federal and state level, and the then-opposition FDP protested heavily. I don't really feel like recapping all their arguments, but they were all based on actual data (showing the feasibility of emailing the providers to effect the removal of child pornography) and technical knowledge (such as the fact that DNS-based censorship like the one proposed by von der Leyen can be circumvented fairly easily). von der Leyen's reasoning was more like this:

Unsurprisingly, numerous discussions on this basis proved fruitless; especially notorious is the claim made by her that "Billions of Euros" were being made with child pornography on the internet, and child pornography being not illegal "in many nations, e.g. India and others" (which drew a rather harsh rebuttal from the Indian Foreign Office), without providing any studies to back this up.

Finally, there is a fairly widespread belief amongst the opposition (and especially netizens) that the whole affair was pretty much a publicity stunt to boast her ratings with the mostly older, non-technical, value voters that make up much of the CDU/CSU electorate. This belief is reinforced by the fact that the whole thing has pretty much blown over after the elections. To some degree the (alleged) publicity campaign seems to have worked, and von der Leyen is still in charge of the Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth in a new, Centre-Right Coalition.

Angela Merkel

As the German Chancellor, you have what is called Richtlinienkompetenz (guideline competence), that allows you to end controversies amongst your cabinet and push through your own decision as the final verdict. Even though some MPs (though not nearly all, or even the majority) of the then-coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD) argued against the von der Leyen-Agenda of web censorship (one MP, Jörg Tauss, even went so far as to leave the SPD and join the Pirate Party), Merkel never exercised her Richtlinienkompetenz on this topic (to be fair, she rarely gets involved in inter-coalition disputes unless a solution already emerged and has been criticised for this "policy of the steady hand").

Back to the Future?

So, where does this leave us? The conclusion is twofold: Firstly, the absolute overkill of Juris Doctorae is fairly typical for German cabinets (and, I would say without having checked, most other countries). My guess is that the endless droning on fairly densely-written laws and prescriptions prepares you for writing similarly dense stuff. So this might mean that most politicians have lots of experience within the murky waters of politics and lawmaking, but only few are (or should be) properly equipped by way of their profession to navigate the - sometimes equally murky - waters of science. Secondly, some politicians that should know better how to accumulate and interpret data, how to look at evidence, and especially how to build a scientific consensus, simply don't, if doing so is not convenient to their ideological agenda or not popular within their constituency.

We will see, how the evidence will fare in the future - I don't have high hopes for it, though.

=====

Footnotes

[1] Angela Merkel: Untersuchung des Mechanismus von Zerfallsreaktionen mit einfachem Bindungsbruch und Berechnung ihrer Geschwindigkeitskonstanten auf der Grundlage quantenchemischer und statistischer Methoden, 1986 (German).
[2] Guido Westerwelle: Das Parteienrecht und die politischen Jugendorganisationen, 1994 (German).
[3] Thomas de Maizière: Die Praxis der informellen Verfahren beim Bundeskartellamt – Darstellung und rechtliche Würdigung eines verborgenen Vorgehens, 1986 (German).
[4] Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger went on to work for the German Patent Office, but I do not kow in which capacity. I suspect the legal department.
[5] Wolgang Schäuble: Die berufsrechtliche Stellung der Wirtschaftsprüfer in Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaften, 1971 (German).
[6] A Diplom usually requires a thesis; as these are not usually published outside the alma mater, I do not know the topic of Brüderle's Diplom-thesis.
[7] Franz Josef Jung: Die Regionalplanung in Hessen, dargestellt am Beispiel der Regionalen Planungsgemeinschaft Rhein-Main-Taunus, 1978 (German).
[8] The CSU is sort of the Bavarian Part of the CDU. After WWII they signed a partnership-agreement and are usually regarded as "sister parties". They do form a common fraction in the Bundestag, but sometimes have some intra-fraction rivalries/disputes.
[9] In Germany, this does not represent a university degree, but rather a kind of add-on to a previous apprenticeship.
[10] Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg: Verfassung und Verfassungsvertrag: konstitutionelle Entwicklungsstufen in den USA und der EU, 2007 (German).
[11] Ursula von der Leyen: C-reaktives Protein als diagnostischer Parameter zur Erfassung eines Amnioninfektionssyndroms bei vorzeitigem Blasensprung und therapeutischem Entspannungsbad in der Geburtsvorbereitung, 1991 (German).
[12] Philipp Rösler: Einfluss der prophylaktischen Sotalolapplikation auf die Inzidenz des postoperativen Vorhofflimmerns im Rahmen der aortokoronaren Bypassoperation, 2001 (German).
[13] Peter Ramsauer: Wirtschaftliche Ziele und Effekte der Gebietsreform in Bayern, 1985 (German).
[14] Norbert Röttgen: Die Argumentation des Europäischen Gerichtshofes - Typik, Methodik, Kritik, 2001 (German).
[15] Annette Schavan: Person und Gewissen - Studien zu Voraussetzungen, Notwendigkeit und Erfordernissen heutiger Gewissensbildung, 1980 (German).
[16] Roughly equivalent to a Master of Public Administration.
[17] As with Brüderle (see fottnote [6], usually a thesis is required, but it does not appear to be published.
[18] Again, some sort of thesis should be neccessary, but probably hasn't been published.
[19] Christian Haasen et al.: Heroin-assisted treatment for opioid dependence: randomised controlled trial, in: The British Journal of Psychiatry. 191, 2007, pp. 55 – 62.

Further Reading:

N. Metrebian et al.: Patients receiving a prescription for diamorphine (heroin) in the United Kingdom, in: Drug and Alcohol Review. 25, No. 2, 2006, pp. 115 – 121.