Project Description
This research project takes a comprehensive and in-depth look at citizens’ attitudes to federalism in the German Länder and Swiss Kantone, with the goal of gaining a better understanding of the conditions under which more or less federalism is demanded. Indeed, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought back long-standing criticism of federalism’s effectiveness both in Germany and Switzerland. However, knowledge on citizens’ attitudes to federalism is scarce (and often limited to some regions) despite the decisive legitimating role attitudes play when reforms of federalism (including centralising options) are debated.
Our project addresses this gap by mapping citizen attitudes to federalism both in Switzerland and Germany, explaining them on the basis of various individual-level, regional-level, and country-level factors, and conducting a detailed analysis of the malleability of citizen preferences for centralisation.
The project is divided into two subprojects: In the first subproject, we conceptualise several dimensions of attitudes to the federal division of powers and systematically analyse a number of factors that explain attitudes to federalism. In the second subproject, we study the nature of preferences for centralisation with the help of a vignette experiment, asking respondents to evaluate reform proposals on several issues that would involve a shift of responsibility from the regional to the national level.
- Measuring and mapping attitudes to different facets of federalism
- Identities and support for federal governance
- Experimental research on attitudes to federalism
- Preferences for changes of federal governance: centralization and decentralization
- Federalism and support for interregional redistribution
- Determinants of citizens’ preferences in federal systems: trust, ideology, and personality
Members of the project team presented findings from the project at various workshops and conferences, including the ECPR General Conference (2023, 2024), the Annual Conference of the EPSA (2024), the Annual Meeting of the ISPP (2025), the Annual Congress of the Swiss Political Science Association ASSP (2023, 2024, 2025), and of the IAGSP (2024). Additionally, findings were presented at the workshop "Making devolution work in an age of multiple crises: Comparative lessons from Europe" at the University of Edinburgh (2024), the “Federalism Workshop” of the DVPW Thematic Group on Federalism in Berlin (2024), and the annual workshop on Public Administration at the University of Lausanne (2022).
Trüdinger, E. M., Hildebrandt, A., Stocker, S., Ajazaj, I., & Bundi, P. (2025). Making sense of federalism–insights from an open-ended survey question. Regional & Federal Studies.
Several studies resulting from the project are currently under review in international journals, and some have already been invited to be resubmitted in revised form. In addition, a book publication has been agreed for 2026.
In March 2025, we discussed papers that originated from the project with international researchers at the project workshop “Rethinking Federalism and Multilevel Governance” at Wartegg Castle in Switzerland.