2025/07/30 by Eva‐Maria Trüdinger, Achim Hildebrandt, Simon Stocker +2 · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Political Systems and Governance #Policy Transfer and Learning
paper · doi:10.1080/13597566.2025.2533759
While there is much debate in research about nuances of federal governance, we actually know little about how citizens make sense of federalism. As several studies show, citizens often hold vague and inconsistent attitudes towards federalism, and it is not entirely clear what citizens associate with this complex concept. To address this issue, we develop a structured coding scheme and examine the responses to an open-ended question about federalism (from a large online survey conducted in Germany in 2023). Only 44 percent of the respondents express meaningful ideas about federalism. Substantive associations with federalism are more common among politically interested and educated respondents. This may indicate a serious problem for democracy if large segments of the public are limited in their ability to follow political affairs and consequently to hold politicians accountable. On a practical level, our study can inform survey research on the perceptions behind people's evaluations of federalism.