Between Coordination and Independent Legislation in the ‘Unitary Federal State’. Analysis of the Impact of the Federalism Reform I (2006) on the German States

The Federalism Reform of 2006 aimed at reversing the interlocked policy-making of the federal government and the Länder governments. For this reason, the reform transferred numerous legislative powers to the exclusive responsibility of the Länder to provide them with more autonomous scope and allow for more federal diversity. The impact of the reform, however, depends on the way the Länder actually make use of their new possibilities: if they continue, despite the extended legal scope, to follow the path of the ‘unitary federal state’ which had dominated for decades, the chances for ‘more federalism’, i.e. more independent legislation would be low. The development after 2006 shows both trends. In some policies the Länder follow their own ways, while obviously in others a high degree of coordination and harmonisation is preferred. Thus, my research question is: Under which conditions do the Länder decide for independent policy-making, under which conditions for coordination and harmonisation? To answer this question I have developed an explanatory model which is tested on the example of four selected policies. All legislative processes in all 16 Länder between 2006 and 2016 are included, resulting in a systematic comparison of 75 qualitative case studies. As a first step indexes are developed for each policy which capture variance regarding the Länder laws. Subsequently, by means of process tracing based on parlamentary document, media content analysis and additionally interviews, I examine which factors explain the policy decisions of the Länder.