RAILWAY REORGANIZATION IN GERMANY - BURDE N-SHIFTING OR CONCEPTUAL REORIENTATION

Since the early 1970s, the central governments have been considered to suffer from ''governmental overload''. In response to this, in German y such as in many other countries, two avenues of modernisation were o pened. On the one hand the mobilisation and reinforcement of the subna tional involvement, that is of the Lander and Kommunen. On the other h and, an introduction of market-oriented strategies such as privatisati on and/or deregulation. The reorganisation of German railways, started in January 1994, provides an opportunity to analyse the relationship of these two strategies, since both, decentralisation and privatisatio n lie at the heart of the reorganisation design. Our reconstruction of the policy process confirms earlier observations that ministerial and federal fragmentation of state authority constitute the main obstacle to structural reform in the German political system. Moreover, there seems to be a tension between decentralisation and privatisation. This is the case, whenever the privatisation approach is spurred by fiscal policies of withdrawal and ''burden-shifting'' rather than by concept ual reorientation of state functions. Thus, the future role of the sta te, i.e. the key element of structural reorganisation, remains unsolve d.