The effectiveness of democratic governance depends crucially on the ability of the executive to process information and to secure coordinated political decision-making in complex environments. This paper asks: How does bureaucratic coordination in multilevel states put executive governance into practice? Focusing on executive coordination in Germany, this paper presents results from expert interviews on the coordination structures between bureaucrats in federal and in Länder ministerial bureaucracies in preparing first ministers' conferences. Different dimensions of coordination mechanisms are distinguished (frequency, formality, hierarchy, involvement of political leaders) which result in different coordination patterns. It is hypothesized that different patterns of coordination mechanisms can be observed depending on the nature of conflict involved in the coordination process: possible lines of conflict are (a) federal vs. Länder level, (b) party ideological positions or (c) policy interests.
