This paper explores the variation in government spending priorities across the 16 German Länder. A scaling analysis of nine different policy domains; including areas such as education, social protection, and economic development reveals that the Länder have different spending patterns. The observed variation, which is found both before and after federal reforms granting greater policy discretion to the Länder, is at odds with normative beliefs in the German context of uniform policy actions. Instead of observing uniformity in policy outputs at the regional level, the paper demonstrates that the institutional framework, capacity of regional governments, and preferences held by policy makers are associated with policy divergence.
