Germany and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

A federal system could arguably be both an opportunity but also a problem for the effective management of a global health pandemic such as the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Finding an appropriate balance between decision-making at the national and the sub-national level was a new governance challenge for every state. The German legal framework for the management of infectious diseases has previously emphasised a strong role for national institutions, in order to guarantee comparability of living conditions across the territory of Germany as a whole. In the face of unprecedented challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, however, these frameworks had to be revised, often with no opportunity for broader reflection. This chapter assesses how the pandemic put pressure on multi-level cooperative systems in Germany. It offers some new insights into how the federal system adapted to the exogenous shock of a global pandemic and, in line with the broader objectives of this book, considers what these tell us about territorial variation more widely.