Costs and benefits of federalization The political dimension

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The Role of Party and Coalition Politics in Federal Reform

The article analyses the role of the German political parties as actors of federal change. Parties perceive federal processes through their own organizational lenses, giving priority to electoral logics, programmatic ideas or territorial interests. Each of the three reform steps in the German case was shaped by a specific blend of the three logics. Looking at the sequences of reform, the analysis shows that parties have remained central for organizing federal processes but have become less capable of arriving at cohesive and unified party positions. There have been struggles over which of the strategies was to prevail both within individual parties and across the party divide. The territorial power balances within parties, the timing of the reform, that is, the constellation of political majorities at federal and regional levels in the moment of reform, and the policy issues in question are important framing conditions for the choice of particular party strategies

Intergovernmental relations in German federalism: Cooperative federalism, party politics and territorial conflicts

Since the late 1970s, but especially since Unification in 1990, the German federal system has come under considerable stress. On the one hand, party competition is increasingly played out through the Bundesrat, the body representing the Länder governments at the federal level, making intergovernmental coordination more difficult and leading to accusations of ‘Reformstau’ (reform log jam). On the other hand, Unification not only added five new Länder to the system, but also led to economic disparities between the Länder at a hitherto unknown level, and deepened territorial conflicts over Länder competencies and the allocation of finances. Both developments have led to demands for a reform of the federal structure aimed at disentangling joint policymaking structures to ensure greater autonomy for both the federal level and the Länder. However, as the article will argue, the developments have resulted in a triangular constellation of interests between the federal level, the richer and the poorer Länder that makes reforming the system almost impossible. (author's abstract