earticle

영어

In summer 2006, after a long period of hard discussions, Germany adopted the most comprehensive reform of its constitution since1949. According to theories on federalism, which
build on the idea of rational traps, this reform should not have taken place. Any reform of the constitution, which would aim at separating interwoven responsibilities of the federal government
and the Länder and at establishing more competition (decoupling), was predicted to fail. Analysts
working from a variety of theoretical perspectives have produced convincing arguments which
mainly point to the "stickiness" of institutions. Moreover, political actors occupy decision-making
positions just for brief periods of time (Pierson 2000: 481) and, if they act as office-seekers, may
care more about reelection and power positions but not about effective institutions. These arguments prompt the question: how is the German reform then to be explained? Contrary to
most theoretical approaches, empirical findings verify that constitutional reforms happen more
often than it is expected. By applying several theories to the puzzle of the reform of German
federalism, my contribution tries to find out why the impossible has taken place. The paper
stresses ideas like the window of opportunity, contextual factors and the importance of crises. It
also discusses how these notions can be adapted to dominating theories which offer a more
precise analytical framework.