Public Attitudes towards German Federalism: A Point of Departure for a Reform of German (Fiscal) Federalism? Differences between Public Opinion and the Political Debate

Petersen, Thieß; Scheller, Henrik; Wintermann, Ole

doi:10.1080/09644000802501638

Cited by 19 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Extant related work that does examine individual preferences generally neglects the specific issue of redistribution across regions. These studies have examined attitudes about “federalism” generally (e.g., Petersen, Scheller, & Wintermann, 2008), or document strong correlations between regional identity and support for regional autonomy, but focus less on the determinants of regional redistribution preferences (Brancati, 2008; Costa-Font & Tremosa-Balcells, 2008).…”

Section: Background and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preferences for Inter-Regional Redistribution

Balcells

Fernández-Albertos

Kuo

2015

Comparative Political Studies

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What explains individual support for inter-regional redistribution? Few studies examine support for regional redistribution, even though such issues are politically salient in many democracies. We test models that hypothesize that such preferences are affected by regional and individual income, as well as other arguments beyond the traditional political economy framework. We focus on informational assumptions and implications of these models with an experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey in Spain. We randomly inform some citizens of the true relative income of their region to assess the impact of this information on regional redistribution preferences. We find that citizens' learning about their region's relative position affects these preferences in a manner consistent with some of the political economy models. We also find some support for out-group concerns as an important factor. The findings have implications for the applicability of economic models to explaining support for regional arrangements.

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Section: Background and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preferences for Inter-Regional Redistribution

Balcells

Fernández-Albertos

Kuo

2015

Comparative Political Studies

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“…The reason for this can be found in a strong centralized political culture: Germany was and still is a federal state with few federalists. This can be demonstrated by a recent study of the Bertelsmann Foundation, which presents data on attitudes towards federalism throughout Germany (Wintermann, Petersen, and Scheller 2008). According to this, most people identify themselves with the local, the national, or the European level, rather than with the regional level of the Land.…”

Section: The (Missing) Role Of the Publicmentioning

confidence: 97%

Reforming Federalism in Germany: Incremental Changes instead of the Big Deal

Burkhart

2008

Publius: The Journal of Federalism

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The unique characteristics of Germany's federalism have been long identified as one of the main obstacles to legitimate and efficient governance. In 2006, the grand coalition adopted a federal reform which aims to disentangle the intertwined levels of government by reducing the influence of the La« nder governments in federal policy-making and strengthening the La« nder by granting more legislative competences to the federal states. In this article, I summarize the reasons for the constitutional change, provide a short overview of the reform process, and evaluate its results. I argue that the achieved compromise will only lead to incremental changes in Germany's federalism and will not be sufficient to solve the perceived problems of Germany's federal structure.Once Germany's constitution, the so-called ''Basic Law,'' was celebrated for Germany's successful transformation from a dictatorship into an exemplary democracy. Beside substantial basic rights granted by the constitution, the Basic Law created the legal and political framework for the ''German Model,'' which boosted economic development and social achievements after World War II. The decline of the German Model, so it seems, has raised a genuine unease about the ''dusted constitution'' (Darnsta ¨dt 2003). The functioning of the federal system, which worked rather successfully in the first post-war decades, has been identified as one of the main obstacles to dealing efficiently with the social and economic challenges of unification, globalization, and Europeanization.After years of academic and political discussion about the necessity and the possibilities of reforming the federal structure, the first part of the reform was adopted under the auspices of the ''grand coalition'' of Christian and Social Democrats in summer 2006. The Merkel government praised the reform as a sweeping modernization of the aging federal system. However, in this article, I argue that the rewriting of the constitution will neither lead to a substantial shakeup of Germany's federal system; nor is it likely to solve the perceived problems

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“…Regardless of the location of formal competences, in other words, regional diversity is not popular in German political culture, and Länder governments will not lightly challenge the unitary sentiments of their constituents. 10 Worse yet, the political agendas in the Länder are often determined by national debates. Thus, when -in the first year after the reform -the federal minister for youth and family affairs started a public campaign focusing on the crucial importance of early education for the intellectual development and life chances of children, the West German Länder could not possibly ignore the need for a dramatic increase of their dismally deficient (in comparison to East Germany) provision of publicly financed child care places.…”

Section: German Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community, Diversity and Autonomy: The Challenges of Reforming German Federalism

Scharpf¹

2008

German Politics

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Public Attitudes towards German Federalism: A Point of Departure for a Reform of German (Fiscal) Federalism? Differences between Public Opinion and the Political Debate

Cited by 19 publications

References 0 publications

Preferences for Inter-Regional Redistribution

Preferences for Inter-Regional Redistribution

Reforming Federalism in Germany: Incremental Changes instead of the Big Deal

Community, Diversity and Autonomy: The Challenges of Reforming German Federalism

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