More Federal Policy-Making or Again Harmonisation in the German ‘Unitary Federal State’? The Impact of the Federalism Reform of 2006 on the German Länder

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 scope, to follow the path of the ‘unitary federal state’ which had dominated for decades, the chances for ‘more federalism’ would be low. The development after 2006 shows both trends of divergence and convergence regarding the different legislative powers (sometimes with and without coordination). Thus, my research question is: Under which conditions do the Länder decide for independent policy-making, under which conditions for harmonisation? To answer this question, I have developed an explanatory model which is tested on the example of four three selected policies (shop closing time, penitentiary system and care homes). All legislative processes in all 16 Länder between 2006 and 2016 are included, resulting in a systematic comparison of around 50 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, I examine which factors explain the policy decisions of the Länder.