Conditions for resilience: A new framework for evaluating legislation in Germany

This paper develops a three-layer "fountain model" - on the levels of sector, economic order, and society - to assess under which conditions legislation strengthens or weakens resilience. Resilience in this framework focuses above all on the capability of continuous adaptation by individuals, companies, institutions, and society as a whole. This adaptive capability can be fostered or hindered by legislative interventions. This is the core contribution of the paper. Our main unit of analysis is the sector level, whereas the economic order and society levels complement the process of cultivating resilience. The first impulse in our model comes from the society level - a change in preferences or cultural change broadly conceived. This in turn creates a reaction at the economic order level, where the formal institutional rules are shaped. These rules then affect the playing ground at the sector level. Economic freedom and competition are the necessary conditions of resilience, sustaining continuous adaptation through a discovery procedure for new knowledge. Eventually the fountain model is applied to three German legislations - Bundeselterngeld- und Elternzeitgesetz (2006), Gebäudetyp E (2025), and Gebäudeenergiegesetz (2023). This assessment sheds light on whether the legislative interventions foster or hinder the resilience of the German economy.