To protect or not protect? Comparing nature conservation policies in the German federal states

Abstract

ABSTRACT With the federalism reform in 2006, the German Länder gained the competence to deviate from the nationwide standard legislation in various areas. In this study, we focus on nature conservation policies and see that some Länder are raising their regulative standards while others are lowering them. Based on an original dataset that measures this direction of policy change, our empirical analysis shows that the party-political composition of the state governments, and particularly the presence/absence of Green parties, plays a crucial role in explaining the variation. Moreover, we find that the strength of nature conservation associations and geographical conditions are relevant, too. In sum, our findings contribute to the growing literature on both the policy effects of the German federalism reform and the partisan effects on public policies, as well as the question of responsive decision-making in multilevel settings.