Germany on a successful road to 'new federalism'? The impact of the Federalism Reform of 2006 on the German Länder

The Federalism Reform of 2006 aimed at reversing the interlocked policy-making between the federal government and the Länder governments. It thereby transferred 16 legislative competences to the Länder to provide them with more autonomous scope and allow for more federal diversity. For this purpose several legislative competences were transferred to the exclusive responsibility of the Länder. Yet, 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 dominated for decades? To answer this question, I have developed an explanatory model identifying factors which promote or obstruct autonomous policy-making by the Länder. Based on these theoretical considerations four legislative competences were selected in order to test the model. By means of process tracing I examine which factors explain the policy decisions of the Länder, including all legislative processes in all 16 Länder between 2006 and 2015.