Prerequisites of Decentralisation: Regional Identity and Policy Preferences in the German Länder

To enhance our understanding of the conditions for decentralisation we analyse two prerequisites for successful decentralisation of democratic decision making that are linked to people’s attitudes. These prerequisites have received only little academic attention so far. Lack of data prevents us from measuring attitudes towards decentralization in the German Laender (federal states) directly. This paper relies on data from the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS). The first object we analyse is people’s identification with their federal states, which is a necessary prerequisite for a demos to make democratic decisions in decentralised policy areas. We focus on potential differences between the few federal states with long historical traditions, such as Bavaria and Hesse, and the majority of the so-called hyphenated states founded by the Allies after World War II, such as Rhineland-Palatinate or North Rhine-Westphalia. We also explore the extent to which a regional identity is compatible with a national or European identity. The second object of our analysis is people’s preferences in a range of policy areas. Considerable interstate differences among the median voters would be a strong argument for decentralisation, indicating that decentralisation facilitates political decisions which correspond more closely to the preferences of the respective median voters than decisions made on the national level. Apart from classical policy fields – social and economic policy and internal security – we also analyse abortion law and homosexual rights as examples of moral policies – areas in which people’s attitudes are influenced by their cultural and religious backgrounds. We show in which policy fields big or small differences between the Laender exist and explain the reasons for those differences. Our main focus is on differences between small city states and large (rural) states and between East and West German states.