Describing the new or emerging forms of
intergovernmental relationships in another federal
system, Helmut Wollmann reports on how administrative
reform, or modernisation, has impacted
on the German political system. Overall, he finds
that while there is a tendency for local government
to become more autonomous vis-à-vis state
and federal authorities, intergovernmental relationships
have not changed dramatically as a
result of the administrative reform which has targeted
intra-institutional processes more than
inter-institutional exchanges. This is to a large
extent because in the German system each tier of
government largely conducts its own processes
of institutional change and also because the budgetary
problems that emerged in the wake of
reunification have targeted institutions, not
institutional relationships, in budgetary cut-back
programmes. Wollmann argues that the changes
that have taken place in intergovernmental relationships
have been ‘path-dependent’, that is, they
have not indicated any major deviations from historical
patterns.