Regional Policy-Making in the Reformed ‚unitary Federal State‘ – The Impact of the Federalism Reform (2006) on the German Länder

The regional level in many democracies has been strengthened over the last decades. Accordingly, the Federalism Reform of 2006 transferred numerous legislative competences to the exclusive responsibility of the Länder, ranging from civil servants’ salary or shop closing time to the penitentiary system. It aimed at providing the Länder with more autonomous scope to conduct their ‘own’ (and potentially different) policies. While Germany has followed the path of homogenous policy outcomes for decades and was thus called ‚unitary federal state‘, with the reunification of 1990, socioeconomic and political differences between the Länder grew substantially. This raises the question, if and how this intensified territorial diversity affects the policy output of the Länder. In this respect, the Federalism Reform opened a window for ‘more federalism’ at the regional level. In my thesis I analyse which impact the Federalism Reform had on regional policy-making. This, 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’, they would contradict the aim of ‘more federalism’. Thus, as a first step, policy-specific indices are developed to capture the variance regarding the Länder laws. They cover all essential aspects of the policy and combine qualitative in-depth analysis with aggregation for quantitative analyses and comparison of higher numbers of laws. The analysis shows that the new scope was partly used for diverging regulations, while in other parts we find continuing uniformity, with significantly varying patterns between the policy fields. These patterns are then examined from different perspectives and by various methods (quantitative and qualitative).