Responsive policy-making in the German federal states? An attempt to systematize and to develop a research program

Abstract

The political science literature on German federalism is extremely diverse. Many scholars have analyzed the institutional arrangements, their transformations, and the dynamics of the German federal state. Another strand of literature focuses on individual policy fields and examines both the interactions between the federal and the state level as well as the variance between the Länder policies and its determinants. Moreover, there has been vibrant research on political parties and parliamentary practices at the Länder level over the last decades. Yet despite this great research activity central questions regarding the interaction between voters, parties, parliaments and governments and their effects on political outputs and outcomes are still unaddressed. According to the argument in this article, this is particularly due to the missing linkages between the individual strands of the literature and the lack of a database which would allow for integrated empirical analyses. Building on a systematization of the literature, this essay lays out a research program that is based on a comprehensive analysis of the political opinion-formation and decision-making process in the German federal states and systematically focuses on questions of responsiveness and feedback.