Introduction: German Federalism in Transition?

Federalism, according to Daniel Elazar, one of the leading scholars on the subject, ‘is rather like wanting to have one’s cake and eat it too’. ¹ By this, Elazar highlights the tension between the need to unite for common purpose and to maintain and sustain distinctiveness. Nowhere in recent times has this proven more true than in the protracted negotiations to modernise the German state’s federal order. Both the federal government and the 16 Länder are locked in a continual struggle to extend their autonomous sphere of competence as far as possible within the framework of the federal system. Whilst political pressure to reform the federal constitution has been a consistently recurring theme throughout the history of the Federal Republic, widespread political malaise and pessimism in the 2000s had increasingly been reflected in weariness with the existing federal system, which was regarded as not being up to the cumulative challenges of German unification, globalisation, Europeanisation and demographic change. ² Put simply, whilst German federalism had clearly contributed to the political stability and economic success of West Germany for a large part of its history, ³ German federalism itself was now popularly regarded as the root cause of Germany’s broader social and economic discontents. As a result of years of frustrated efforts to rationalise the decision-making system and improve the legislative process, ‘federalism’ had in Germany come to be widely regarded as synonymous with Reformstau (reform blockage) and Stillstand (inertia).