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How do the fundamental institutional rules of a political system evolve or change? When can they be altered, and by whom? Basic constitutional rules like federalism belong to the meta-rules that structure the political game in advanced democracies. As such they are hard to change because they usually are subject to large set-up costs, involve multiple constituencies, and are conditioned by the entrenched interests of a variety of powerful key actors. The (failed) reforms of a federal system thus present opportunities to examine whether and how the basic rules of the game can be changed.Theories about constitutional and institutional change can be divided into normative, interest-based, and non-rational explanations. They fit quite neatly into current divisions within the new institutionalism in political science, between historical-institutionalism, rational choice and sociological institutionalism (Hall and Taylor 1996). Historical-institutional explanations emphasize path dependence, stickiness, and "lock-in" effects, whereas rational choice underscores the contested nature of institutional development and the distribution of power and strategic interactions of key actors in society. Sociological explanations highlight the non-rational effects of political discourse and the impact of the recognition heuristic (Immergut 2006).After German unification and the creation of the European Union in the early 1990s, federalism became widely regarded as at least partially responsible for the German "Reformstau" or "reform gridlock". This paper briefly examines the evolution and the repeated efforts to reform the federal system of (West) Germany. The main focus is on the work of the "Federalism Commission" from 2003 to 2004 and the final adoption of its proposals to reform the German federal system in May 2006. Utilizing historical-institutional, rational, and sociological explanations, the paper will assess whether the changes of federalism in Germany represent primarily the (un-)intended consequences of prior normative commitments and path-dependent development of institutions, whether they are the results of deliberate choices and self-interested utility maximization of powerful key actors in German politics and society, or whether they are the non-rational outcomes of political discourse, cognitive framing and recognition heuristics among decision makers, or perhaps a combination of all three. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the influence of federalism on educational performance in the sixteen German Laender. It examines the impact of political, demographic, economic, and school characteristics on achievement scores and graduation rates cross-sectionally and over time (1992-2002). Germany presents a unique opportunity to understand how the established tradition of federalism in the ?old? Laender versus new institutional arrangements in the ?new? Laender affect educational performance. The research offers one of the first comparisons of educational performance between the East and the West. It finds that political factors influence school performance variations overall, but they are particularly powerful in the West. Many scholarly works have dealt with German federalism or German education separately, but there has been no attempt to fully consider how federalism affects educational performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the Federal Republic of Germany, I offer an analysis of voter behavior in federal contexts. Using data from German federal and Länder elections between 1965-2002, I establish voting patterns in state elections and their relationship to voting in federal elections. The institutional design of the German system by which electoral cycles are unsynchronized both across states and between states and federal levels allows for a particularly interesting comparative analysis. I first demonstrate that unless elections are concurrent, the party holding the chancellery systematically loses seats in state elections, and that the extent to which voters withdraw their support from the party holding the chancellery depends on the timing of the elections with respect to the federal cycle. Following these finding, I then sample particular elections and employ a micro-foundational analysis based on survey data from these elections. I show that voters engage in vertical institutional balancing, using state institutions to counterbalance the federal government. Finally, I use these insights to reinterpret the ongoing debate between the directional and proximity models of voter choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]