CONCEPTS FOR PRIVATIZING NATIONALIZED LAN D AND FOR REGULATING COMPENSATION FOR EXPROPRIATIONS IN THE NEW FEDERAL STATES ANALYSIS AND ALTERNATIVES

The privatisation process of the nationalized land and the still expec ted bill to regulate the compensation for expropriations in East Germa ny are interdependent issues. As an introduction a short discription o f the legal preconditions to resolve the problems associated with priv atisation and compensation is given. The analysis is based on the conc epts of Institutional Choice Theory, the New Political Economy and the concept of Policy-Analysis. The underlying process is identified as a widely politically directed institutional change. In addition, the pa rticipation of three policy-nets makes it more difficult to analyse th e process: the traditional ''west-oriented'' net of agricultural polic y, the net of financial policy similarly oriented towards West German interests and third the new net of agricultural policy and administrat ion in the New Lander. Thus the hypothesis is put forward that the var ious political interest groups will use different policy-nets and spec ific methods to achieve their political goals. Obviously they will try to establish a privatisation regime maximizing their own opportunitie s to exert influence on the agents involved in the privatisation proce ss. The paper is focussing on two episodes of institutional change, fi rst the transition from the so called Gerster-Paper to the Bohl-Paper (Three-Phase-Model) and second the replacement of the Gattermann-Model (Certificate-Model) by the Bond-Model, created by the Federal Governm ent. It is apparent from these examples that the West-German-oriented networks prefer methods we call ''Feinsteuerung'', what means exertion of influence in processes of information and negotiation within die n etworks of bureaucracies, parliamentary committees and interest groups , whereas die policy net in the New Lander obviously prefers instrumen ts from the arsenal of the so called ''Grobsteuerung'', e. g. their in fluence relies on political pressure originating from party competitio n, the danger of vote losses and public protest. This result correspon ds with the specific comparative advantages of the interest groups in the decision making process. Unlike the interests of the expropriated former property-owners the regional farmers' unions in die New Lander prefer to establish a ''dosed-shop'' concept favouring the existing fa rms and farmers to manage conflicting interests. The former, in the mo st cases people now living in West-Germany, want to open the distribut ion process for ''outsiders'' and therefore prefer market instruments for distribution of land. Simultanously they try to establish preferen tial treatments in their favour by making use of the west oriented pol icy nets. So up to now the privatisation process including compensatio n components is dominated by governmental-administrative action and th erefore corresponds more to the interests of the now existing farmers and their associations in the New Lander.