On a Successful Road to Federal Diversity? the Impact of the Federalism Reform of 2006 on the German Länder

The Federalism Reform of 2006 aimed at reversing interlocked policy-making between the federal government and the Länder governments by transferring 16 legislative competences to the Länder to enhance their autonomy. I firstly examine to what extent this goal was achieved, based on interviews with ministerial experts. My results show that a significant part of the ‘new’ scope only represents a change de jure but not de facto. Furthermore, several legal restrictions – overlapping federal and EU competences as well as court judgments – narrow the new scope.

Moreover, the impact of the reform depends on the way the Länder actually make use of their new possibilities: do they choose autonomous legislation or do they, despite the reform, continue to follow the path of the ‘unitary federal state’ which had been the dominant norm for decades? To answer this question, I have developed an explanatory model identifying factors which promote or obstruct autonomous policy-making in the Länder. Based on these theoretical considerations four legislative competences were selected in order to test the model. For each of the competences the Länder laws are compared with respect to the degree of divergence. The analysis of the laws shows that there are – beside continuing trends of uniformity – considerable differences concerning the arrangements in detail. By means of process tracing the legislative activities (leading to these laws) in all 16 Länder are examined. My results show that in fact only part of the uniformity of laws is caused by the intention of harmonisation.