In summer 2001, the red-green coalition government granted same-sex unions a legal status in Germany. Yet, due to the decentralised political system, it lies within the competences of each state (Land) to define how this particular policy is to be implemented. While most states adopted uniform fees for the legal registration of same-sex couples, the state government of Baden-Wuerttemberg opted for an individual approach: each county decides about the fee level that a gay couple has to pay when registering at the rural district office. The fees vary between 40 € and 248 €. It is the objective of this paper to investigate the determinants of the varying fee level. On the basis of policy-seeking theories and the model of budget-maximising bureaucrats by Niskanen (1971), we argue that the fee level for same-sex unions to get registered predominantly depends on the representational strength of socially progressive parties in the county parliaments. Furthermore, we shed light on the fact that contextual features like economic problem pressure, socio-cultural features and aspects of policy learning should affect the fees gay couples have to pay. The empirical analysis, which is based on an original dataset, provides support for our main argument, that is, the representational strength of progressive party groups matters significantly.
