The Deutsche Bundesbank and European Monetary Union: Assessing the propensity to cooperate

This work analyzes the Bundesbank's behavior within certain environmental influences and preference orderings. It is premised on identifying goals, their relative preference ordering among multiple actors, and how that ordering affects the propensity to cooperate. The study identifies three orders of goals around which conclusions about propensity to cooperate may be drawn, reflecting the actor's efforts to achieve and maintain its important goals. Their consequent influence on actor behavior contributes to an understanding of how goals and cooperation are intertwined.; To assess the linkage between goals and cooperation, the study also examines the operational context for cooperation; composed of actor self-definition, perceived roles, issue nature, and arenas for negotiation. As such, the study utilizes an in-depth examination of the primary actor to provide the context within which goals are identified and prioritized. The actor and its preferences are factors that contribute to understanding elements that contribute to goal attainment or maintenance, and consequently to cooperation.; The study uses a dual approach. The first part examines theoretical considerations and potential inputs to cooperation. It also provides a detailed historical and organizational analysis of the actor to determine which inputs to cooperation are most important. The second section uses two case studies, which provide a narrative of historical events, and Bundesbank behavior therein, to evaluate the theoretical propositions. The first case examines the 1992--93 Exchange Rate Mechanism crisis in the context of European monetary politics and the Bundesbank's role and preferences therein. The second case study reviews the Economic and Monetary Union development and the Banles activities in that endeavor via observations about domestic and supranational monetary policy, and Bundesbank preferences and influences on EMU.; The result is a staged analytical process that assesses cooperation as a precondition of integration and goal convergence as a precondition of cooperation. This process attempts to discover not only who the actor is, but also how it acts, and what it wants. The systematic answering of these questions begins to predict actor behavior in a manner that, hopefully, will be replicable to other studies.