ABSTRACT
Regional policy has a long tradition in Germany. Until the early 1970s, apart from a few emergency measures, regional policy was essentially a function of the federal states (Länder). As in other countries, German governmental administration is traditionally organised by policy divisions, with individual ministries assigned to the areas of transport, telecommunications, agriculture, urban planning, research and development and the environment; there is only loose co-ordination of these policy areas by regional planning policy, which has a so-called ‘policy cross-section’ function. Regional planning policy has been kept consciously weak in relation to the specialist ministries and to the governments of the federal states in order to allow the ‘policy cross-section’ principle to be applied on the one hand while abiding by the principle of federalism and subsidiarity on the other. As a result of this strict division between fields of activity, regional policy has had to restrict itself to the field of regional investment aid.
