From Co-operative Federalism Towards more Dual Federalism in Germany: Which Länder deviate from the Policy Mainstream?

Dual and co-operative federalism have traditionally been defined as binary concepts. Yet, they can be fruitfully treated as a continuum to take account of significant changes in federal states over time. While the US and Switzerland have become vastly more co-operative since their inception, Germany has turned more dual since the 1980s. How does that affect policy outcomes? As co-operative federalism is usually linked to coordination and similar policy outcomes at the regional level, we expect Germany’s turn towards more duality to result in increased policy divergence. Thus we analyse in this paper which Länder deviate from the policy mainstream, i.e. the policies most other Land parliaments enact. We select the German case to understand what drives regional parliaments to ‘do it their way’ and deviate from the policy mainstream if strong regional ethnic identities lack. We created a novel database that captures law-making in 16 fields that the Länder gained through the federalism reform of 2006. To measure policy differences between Länder we created an index for each field. We find that some Länder mostly stick with the policy mainstream while others systematically enact deviating laws. Based on a panel data analysis (2006-2013) we find that larger Länder deviate more from the policy mainstream than smaller ones. This confirms our hypothesis that larger Länder have a greater confidence in federal matters as they resemble typical European national states. Moreover, Länder that have a long-lasting history of statehood deviate more from the policy mainstream that Länder lacking historic territorial integrity.