Josef Esser (political scientist)

Josef Esser (born April 12, 1943 in Aachen ; † March 3, 2010 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German political scientist .

Life

After working as an industrial clerk from 1959 to 1966, he made up his Abitur in 1967 at the evening high school in Aachen. He then studied political science, economics, history and sociology in Berlin and Konstanz from 1967 to 1974. Finally he received his doctorate in 1974 to become Dr. rer. soc. at the University of Konstanz . From 1974 to 1981 he was a research assistant in the Department of Politics and Administration at the University of Konstanz. In 1981, Esser qualified as a professor at the social science faculty of the University of Konstanz for political science. Since then he has been Professor of Political Science and Political Sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. From 1983/1984 and 1995/1996 he was also dean of the department.

Josef Esser died on March 3, 2010 at the age of 66 after a serious illness.

Works

Due to his professional past, in which he was a trade union member himself, Josef Esser mainly deals with trade unions and their role in the current world of work. One of his most important works in this context, “Unions in Crisis: The Adaptation of German Unions to New World Market Conditions”, published in 1982, deals with the relationship between unions, the state and employers. In this context, Esser puts forward the thesis that there has been a historically grown willingness to compromise between entrepreneurs and trade unions in Germany, which is only occasionally disturbed by exaggerated demands from entrepreneurs. He describes this cooperation as " corporatist block formation". According to Esser, German trade unions should be classified as conflict-averse, as many employees were too afraid of losing their jobs after the global economic crisis in the 1970s.

A year later, Esser published together with W. Fach and W. Väth the book "Crisis Regulation - for political enforcement of economic constraints" (1983). The authors state in that publication that the competition on the world market forces entrepreneurs to make more profit-oriented calculations. As a result, the unions have their backs to the wall and are forced to follow, as Esser calls them, the "logic of the lesser evil". This willingness to compromise on the part of the trade unionists, however, leads to the fact that the "screw" is tightened more and more, so that it is only a matter of bare survival for the union members.

Another work entitled “Social and Economic Conflicts in Standardization Processes” was written by Esser in 1995 in collaboration with Gerd Fleischmann and Thomas Heimer. Esser claims here that technological progress results from competition on the world market and therefore cannot be regulated by the state. Furthermore, the research group regards technological progress as a social and political process, as it has direct effects on society and politics.

The media also knew how to make use of Esser's many years of experience and frequently asked him about trade union issues and any political processes that could have consequences in the world of work.

Publications

• Social planning in capitalist and socialist systems. Gütersloh 1972 (together with Frieder Naschold and W. Väth eds.)
• Introduction to the materialist state analysis. Frankfurt / New York 1975. Italian edition: Per Un'Analisi Materialistica Dello Stato. Presentazione di Cesare Donati. Rome 1979
• Trade unions in crisis - The adaptation of the German trade unions to new world market conditions. Frankfurt 1982
• Accompanying study to the federal government's special labor market policy program for problem regions: Saarland region. Research report on behalf of the International Institute for Management and Administration, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, Ms., Konstanz 1980, 139 p. (Together with W. Fach and W. Väth)
• Crisis Regulation - For the political implementation of economic constraints. Frankfurt 1983 (together with W. Fach and W. Väth)
• Between downsizing and modernizing - industrial policy in crisis sectors. "International Politics" series of the Research Institute of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Bonn 1986 (together with R. Staudhammer)
• The political economy of love. Frankfurt 1986 (together with A. Drescher and W. Fach)
• "... sold piece by piece". Conversion of the Federal Post Office - Consequences for the Employees, ed. from the Deutsche Postgewerkschaft, District Hessen, Frankfurt 1988 (together with T. Allwin et al.)
• Technology development as a social process. Conditions, goals and consequences of technology design and forms of technology assessment. Symposium of the Interdisciplinary Working Group on Technology Research (IATF) of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt 1989, 10. – 12. December 1987 (together with G. Fleischmann (ed.))
• Politics, institutions and the state. On the criticism of regulation theory, Hamburg 1994 (together with Christoph Görg and Joachim Hirsch )
• Social and economic conflicts in standardization processes, Frankfurt am Main - New York 1995 (together with Gerd Fleischmann and Thomas Heimer (eds.))
• European telecommunications in the age of deregulation - infrastructure in transition, Münster 1997 (together with Boy Lüthje and Ronald Noppe)
• Social closure in the process of technology development - mission statement, paradigm, standard, Frankfurt am Main - New York 1998 (together with Gerd Fleischmann and Thomas Heimer)
• Metropolitan Region in Networking - The Frankfurt / Rhein-Main Case, Frankfurt am Main- New York 2001 (together with Eike W. Schamp)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Critical companion ( memento from July 30, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )

Web links

• Literature by and about Josef Esser in the catalog of the German National Library
• obituary