Co-ordinated Continental European Market Economies Under Pressure From Globalisation: Germany's “Rhineland capitalism”

[Editors’ Note: The 22 July 2004 acquittals of all six defendants in the criminal proceedings against former Mannesmann CEO, Klaus Esser; Deutsche Bank's CEO (Vorstandssprecher) and then Member of Mannesmann's supervisory board, Josef Ackermann, and other members of Mannesmann's Supervisory Board have, once more, highlighted to German, European and International observers the particular features of law and politics in “Germany Inc.”, “Rhenish Capitalism”, or “Rhineland Capitalism”. As begun in the aftermath of Josef Ackermann's inthronization at the head of Deutsche Bank and Ackermann's subsequent transformation of the Board's control structure, German Law Journal has published several contributions to the ongoing changes in German corporate governance and its embeddedness within the specific German economic and legal system. In his fine piece, Jürgen Hoffmann, Professor of Sociology in Hamburg, surveys the current interdisciplinary debate over the future fate of so-called Rhineland Capitalism and reconstructs Germany's recent history in an international context. In the next issue, to be published on 1 September 2004, Professor Christopher Allen of the University of Georgia will further deepen this inquiry and place the contemporary debate over the possible end of Rhineland capitalism in the historical context of Germany's development in the 20th Century. The Editors of German Law Journal are very pleased and honored to be able to provide for a further forum for this important debate, bringing together lawyers, economists, political scientists and sociologists, for a much needed exploration of the historical and political origins as well as of the legal framework of Germany's much critizised and, at the same time, ardently praised system of corporate governance and industrial relations. We invite our readers to contribute to this debate, which has so far found too little resonance in Germany itself. The Editors.]