No abstract

The German federal system is conventionally understood as highly coordinated between federal and regional governments and aimed at producing a 'uniformity' of living conditions. This view has increasingly been challenged as new work focuses on innovation and diversity at the regional level, and also as a consequence of reforms to the federal system that took place in 2006. This article attempts to establish a more systematic basis for assessing and explaining the scope and significance of regional policy variation in Germany. Our findings suggest that -despite institutional structures that foster intense coordination between central and regional governments and apparent popular preferences for uniformity of policy outcomes-the extent of policy variation in Germany is much greater than conventionally understood and driven both by structural factors and partisan choices at the regional level.

A paradox exists within the context of the German federal system. On one side stands a strong view that pervades society and academia that the German system strives for and produces uniform policy outcomes across the heterogeneous Lӓnder, which is at odds with what one is conditioned to expect from a federal state. On the other side sits research and findings, though less common, that Germany does and has historically had diverse policy outcomes. This article starts to unwind the puzzle on how two views that appear to be diametrically opposed to one another co-exist in Germany.

Citizens’ juries have become a popular method for engaging citizens in deliberation about complex public policy issues, such as climate action and sustainable development. Empirical evidence routinely indicates that jurors change their minds throughout the process. What is less clear is when and why this occurs and whether the causes are consistent across juries that consider the same topic but are situated within different contexts. We present evidence of opinion change in citizens’ juries through a natural experiment, contrasting three local contexts of onshore windfarm development in Scotland; viz. existing, planned, and absent. Jurors’ individual opinions of climate change, wind energy, and windfarms were measured through questionnaires at four time points: the start, following information-giving, reflection, and deliberation. Statistical examination of jurors’ responses, through paired sample t-tests, Wilcoxon sign-tests, and Generalised Least Squares regression, reveals to what extent substantive changes were associated with different phases and locational contexts. In all three juries, opinion change occurs throughout the process, on different topics, and to different degrees. While the information phase consistently influences jurors’ opinions the most, jury composition affects the magnitude and direction of opinion change, with outcomes contingent on contexts. Our findings are important for informing how mini-publics are designed and used to inform environmental policy-making at different scales.

No abstract