'New’ Fragmentation or ‘Old’ Uniformity in German Federalism after the Reform of 2006? Determinants of Länder Policy Making

The Federalism Reform I (2006) was the most important constitutional reform since the coming into effect of the German constitution in 1949. It aimed at disentangling the interlocked policy-making in the German federal state in order to provide the Länder with more autonomy and to allow for more federal diversity. For this purpose several additional legal competences, ranging from shop closing time and civil service law to the right of assembly. Yet, while many federal states are shaped by the principle of reflecting and encouraging diversity, it is often argued that the Federal Republic of Germany has a unitary political culture. Some scholars even say that in Germany the necessary ‘federal culture’ is missing as surveys regularly show that in all Länder a clear majority prefers solidarity to federal competition and wishes to have nationwide equivalent living conditions. Against this background it is asked how the Länder made use of the new competences and if the reform changed the nature of German federalism. To put more precisely our research question is: How can fragmentation and uniformity concerning the new Länder laws be explained? To this end we develop a theoretical framework bringing together essential factors of federalism research and policy analysis. Subsequently the framework is tested empirically on the basis of four selected legislative competences by mainly qualitative analysis. Our results show that problem pressure in combination with budgetary constraints and to some extent party differences lead to fragmentation of laws. In contrast, uniformity is influenced by public opinion (unitary political culture) and to some extent by constitutional courts.