Abstract
The German federal system is conventionally understood as highly co-ordinated between federal and regional governments and aimed at producing a 'uniformity' of living conditions. This view has increasingly been challenged as new work focuses on innovation and diversity at the regional level, and also as a consequence of reforms to the federal system that took place in 2006. This contribution attempts to establish a more systematic basis for assessing and explaining the scope and significance of regional policy variation in Germany. Our findings suggest that - despite institutional structures that foster intense co-ordination between central and regional governments and apparent popular preferences for uniformity of policy outcomes - the extent of policy variation in Germany is much greater than conventionally understood and driven both by structural factors and partisan choices at the regional level.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1350-1366 |
| Number of pages | 17 |
| Journal | Journal of European Public Policy |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 8 Jul 2014 |
Bibliographical note
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of European public policy on 2014, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13501763.2014.923022Keywords
- German federalism
- policy variation
- political parties