Subconstitutionalism in a Multilayered System: A Comparative Analysis of Constitutional Politics in the German Länder
- Autores: Astrid Lorenz, Werner Reutter
- Localización: Perspectives on Federalism, ISSN-e 2036-5438, Vol. 4, Nº. 2, 2012
- Idioma: inglés
- Enlaces
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Resumen
Even though there have been some revaluations of the Länder in the last two decades German debates on federalism hardly take subnational constitutional politics into account. For example, textbooks on federalism deal with amendments of the German constitution, i.e. the Basic Law, but they mostly fail to address constitutional adjustments at the subnational level or causal interrelations between the two constitutional levels.
In this paper we will, of course, not be able, to fill that rather huge gap. Taking G. Alan Tarr’s highly intriguing paper on “Subnational Constitutional Space” as a blueprint, we analyze German “subconstitutionalism” in three steps. First, we will describe and compare Land constitutions in order to highlight differences between them and similarities among them (1.). Second, we will present some explanations for these differences and similarities (2.), and finally we analyze some issues concerning changes of Land constitutions (3.).
