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The article describes and explains Germany's societal, economic, and political reactions to the "Belt and Road Initiative" (BRI). This is (potentially) China's global interconnectivity platform, established in 2013 to address development challenges in some of the country's border provinces, in its export-led growth model, as well as the infrastructure and development gaps in neighboring regions. Applying a liberal theory perspective, the article finds strong economic support for the initiative in Germany but also growing political concerns about regulatory conflicts over equal market access, Chinese investments in the European Union, and their (potential) political implications for intra-EU decision-making processes. The article concludes that some structural conflicts between the EU/Germany and China are inevitable, as evidenced by the recent launch of the EU's own infrastructure initiative for Asia – but also that several structural adjustments as well as dwindling Chinese resources will mitigate these conflicts in the future (Asien/GIGA)

The paper suggests a dialogue between role theory and foreign policy learning literature. I argue that role theory, when conceptualized in the interactionist tradition of George Herbert Mead, can contribute analytical clarity to the literature on policy learning. By specifying role theory to account for various modes of "role taking," the constitutive social effects of individual or organizational learning for a given community become apparent. Furthermore, an interactionist reading of role theory advances the concept of "role taking" by complementing it with "role making." While the former connects societal expectations and individual or collective self-expectations and behavior, the later conceives learning as the interaction between individual creativity and societal expectation in the process of "as-if role taking." The illustrative cases of role making and taking reveal the creative effects of role making while accounting for the constraining impact of institutions and communal expectations. I conclude that role theory and (foreign policy) learning are powerful explanatory tools, but only if they are integrated to bridge the gap between agent and structure. Adapted from the source document.