ABSTRACT
Germany has a federal system, and the main institutional features of German federalism owe very little to deliberate constitutional design. Most German-language textbooks on the political system of Germany begin by describing the process of constitution-making in 1948/49; the implication being that this is the origin of the present institutional framework. German federalism obeys a specific ‘institutional logic’ which distinguishes it from other federal systems. The institutional basis of the Imperial dynasty of the Habsburgs remained confined to their territorial domain of Austria and the last great effort of the Habsburgs to establish their supreme authority failed in the Thirty Years’ War. The dissolution of Prussia by the Allied Control Council in 1946 eliminated an important institutional basis of co-operative harmonisation. German federalism essentially originated from a process of institutional strengthening of inter-governmental relationships. The functioning of federal decentralisation is thus strongly dependent on the system of revenue-sharing.
