„Wilhelmshaven blickt seewärts“ - Beginn und Ende eines wirtschaftspolitischen Pfades

Abstract

Between 1970 and 1985, the Northwest German port city of Wilhelmshaven saw profound transformations. City hall and administration sought to attract capital-intensive, petro-chemical companies. These attempts were due to the city’s major structural problem: both main employers were not taxable. Hence, the business tax revenue was rather meagre. City hall, administration, local media, and parts of the population had high hopes about the successful attraction of an alumina plant and a refinery. Further industrial complexes were projected, but only few were realised. The paper discusses these politics of industrialisation as the beginning and the end of a particular path. It analyses the emergence of the path in the early 1970s and how it prefigured the city’s fate for more than a decade. Next to the path’s impact on the city’s budget and social structure, the paper will also investigate theoretical aspects of path-dependency: What are the concept’s theoretical means to ascertain the beginning and the end of a path?