Determinanten von Leistungsabbau in den Länderhaushalten

Abstract

This diploma thesis examines the determinants of retrenchment in the German<br />Laender. The literature of policy-termination states that there are two possibilities to abandon a policy: An immediate termination of the policy (<br />big bang ) or a long-term decrease in public funding ( long whimper ). Focusing on the long-term decrease of the expenditures in the policy sectors of agriculture, economy and social welfare in seven Laender, the year-to-year change of defined elements of expenditure is used as dependent variable. The partisan politics model is used to explain the party differences in the specific policy fields.<br /><br />Descriptive and regression analytic methods are used to test the hypotheses on a sample of TimeSeries Cross-Sectional data. Hypotheses state that the the political parties will spare their voters. No empirical evidence supporting the<br />hypotheses is found except the finding that grand coalitions save the expenditures of their clientele and cut less expenditures than other coalition types do. Instead, the socio-economic variables such as the economic power, the level of public debts, the rate of economic growth and budget growth are able to<br />explain some variance of the changes in the Laender budgets.