Crises as driver of policy accumulation: Regulatory change and ratcheting in German asylum policies between 1975 and 2019

While there is broad scholarly agreement on the pattern of ever-growing policy stocks in modern democracies, research drivers accumulation still its infancy. This holds particular for role crises and external shocks. relationship between crisis events change individual policies fairly uncontested, we lack systematic knowledge extent to which trigger accumulation. To address this gap, analyze if what drive sectoral over time. Focusing development German asylum policy, show that constitute major “regulatory ratchets”. stock remained rather constant noncrisis times, led addition multiple new elements, moving toward a “plateau”. Crises hence not only increase likelihood substantial but also