文摘
Owing to the first reform of German federalism in 2006, the German Länder gained legislative competence to set the salaries of the civil servants in the Länder. Since then, they have exercised this power very differently. This becomes clearly evident in the growing salary discrepancy between the Länder. We draw on debt pressure, differences in the party composition of the governments, the number of veto players in the cabinet and membership in the Employers’ Association of the German Länder (TdL) as possible explanatory factors. Correlation and regression analyses indicate that salary size is best explained by debt pressure and membership in the Employers’ Association of the German Länder. This relationship especially holds true for senior civil service positions. Contrary to our expectation, those Länder governed by left-wing governments pay less compared to Länder governed by conservative governments.