Effects of Territorial Party Politics on Horizontal Coordination among the German Länder – An Analysis of the COVID-19 Pandemic Management in Germany

ABSTRACT

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 not only put the public health system under considerable pressure, but it also posed a huge challenge for established routines of intergovernmental coordination in Germany. As the Länder are responsible for implementing infection prevention measures, the most senior intergovernmental council, the minister presidents’ conference (MPK), became the central body for pandemic crisis management. In light of high uncertainty, time pressure and public attention, drastic actions were taken to contain the dissemination of the corona virus. Against this background, our paper investigates how party politics impacted on horizontal coordination in times of crisis. The analysis shows that indeed territorial party politics interferes with routines of intergovernmental coordination. While congruence between the federal and Länder governments promotes homogenous implementation of joint MPK resolutions, increasing coalition size and intense party competition make deviations more likely. Finally, partisan ideology plays a key role as parties pursue clearly distinct pandemic management strategies.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Federal Law Gazette, Vol. 2021, part I # 18, pp. 802–807 (www.bgbl.de).

2 The effective number of parliamentary parties is calculated according to the formula proposed by Laakso and Taagepera (1979) as ENPP = 1/Σs_i², where s_i is the proportion of seats of the i^th party.

3 The following description of the history, tasks and working mode of the MPK is a shortened version of (Behnke 2021a, 40ff.). For more details, see Scherer (2009, chapter 3-6) and Martens (2003).

4 In most cases, decisions are accepted if a quorum of 13 out of 16 Länder agrees (Scherer 2009, 111).

5 However, the MPK has no permanent administrative office nor an official website. Instead, those functions rotate on an annual basis with the MPK presidency among the Länder. Thus, information must be assembled by scraping the websites of the Länder governments.

6 For a comparative analysis of the role of intergovernmental councils in pandemic management see also Hegele and Schnabel (2021) and Schnabel, Hegele, and Freiburghaus (2022).

7 Traditionally, the parties The Left, SPD, and The Greens are forming the political left, while CDU, AfD and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) compose the political right. Since the AfD is not an acceptable coalition partner for any other party due to its populist, far-right ideology, even if the three right-wing parties gained the majority of seats, they were unable to form a coalition.

8 At the same time, Armin Laschet participated in the contest for CDU-leadership, which he won in January 2021.

9 Besides regular MPK meetings, we also considered ad hoc meetings between the Chancellor and the minister presidents of the Länder (the so-called Bund-Länder-Konferenz) and meetings between the heads of the Federal and State Chancelleries.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christian Person

Dr. Christian Person is a postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University of Darmstadt. In his research, he focuses on public finances (particularly local public finances), intergovernmental relations, local politics and local governance as well as on administrative elites.

Nathalie Behnke

Prof. Dr. Nathalie Behnke is professor and head of the working group ‘Public Administration, Public Policy’ at the Institute of Political Science, Technical University of Darmstadt. Her research is located at the intersection of public administration, comparative federalism and multilevel governance with a focus on coordination within and among governments.

Till Jürgens

Till jürgens is a research associate and graduate student at the Technical University of Darmstadt. In his doctoral dissertation, he analyses the capabilities of local government associations to solve collective action problems. His research interests include intergovernmental relations, representation of municipal interests, and party politics.