This paper aims to analyse the impact of the 2006 federalism reform – which had been the most important constitutional change since 1949 – on the ‘Länder’ (states). The background of the reform was the problem of the so-called joint-decision trap (Fritz Scharpf), which describes a situation of blockage due to the fact that numerous legislative decisions can only be made in agreement of the two government levels. Thus the intention of the reform was to achieve more autonomy for both government levels by more clearly separating the legislative competences between them. Consequently, a set of competences was transferred into the exclusive responsibility of the states, ranging from civil servants’ salary to shop closing time
After the reform was passed, a debate instantly started in the literature about its worth and effects. One of the main questions discussed was, if the selection of transferred competences could really lead to more autonomy for the states or if these competences are just quantitatively imposing and not substantially significant. However, in contrast to the development at the federal level, there is almost no empirical research available regarding the states – this is the gap, in which my paper is focused. In my paper, I first examine to what extent the states have actually made use of their new legislative competences. Theoretically, an extensive use of competences would be expected because the new possibilities correspond to the states’ interest in more autonomy. The reality, instead, didn’t meet these expectations: Partially, the new competences were largely used, while others were almost completely ignored. So in the second part, I will discuss potential explanations for the detected ‘non-decisions’, whereby the legislation activity is used as indicator for the relevance the state itself assigns to a competence.
