Government, Federal Union

The kind of federalism set forth in the Basic Law is based on German federal traditions and differs from the federal system of the United States. German federalism concentrates legislative power at the federal level and places administrative and judicial powers at the state level. Each state has a popularly elected legislature, which chooses a minister-president or a first mayor (in Hamburg and Bremen) to serve as chief executive. There is very little for the 16 state assemblies to legislate because the Basic Law subordinates most state legislative powers to the federal government. However, the states formulate some educational and cultural policies and maintain police. The administration of all laws, including federal laws, is almost exclusively in the hands of the states. Federal administration—except for the foreign service, border protection, and defense—is limited to the personnel of federal cabinet ministries and institutes. These federal bodies collect statistics and draw up legislative bills for policy-making. Even taxation is mostly federally legislated and state administered, including the largest sources of revenue, income and corporation taxes. These taxes are shared by the state and federal levels and, in part, are redistributed from the richer to the poorer states.

The key German federal institution is the Bundesrat (Federal Council), which is the representative of the state governments and has the final say in disputes between states and between the states and the federal government. The Bundesrat is the upper house of parliament but its members are state ministers or civil servants and are not elected; instead their respective state governments appoint them. Of Germany’s 16 states, the four largest—North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Baden-Wurttemberg, and Bavaria—are all in the west and tend to predominate in the Bundesrat. The five states of former East Germany—which are mostly poor and, with the exception of Saxony, small in population—play a lesser role in federal politics.