Germany’s Reunification - The Political Geography of Inequality - page 163

TABLE 6.7. The Redistributive Impact of the FA System

1996 2000

Before After % Change Before After % Change

NW 79253 76128 − 3.94 88071 85871 − 2.5

Bavaria 53876 50925 − 5.48 62219 58470 − 6.03

− −

BW 46432 43911 5.43 54453 50581 7.11

Lower Sa 30379 31292 3.01 33793 34906 3.29

Hesse 29122 25883 − 11.12 35254 29901 − 15.18

Rhine Pal 15824 16056 1.47 17002 17782 4.59

Schl-Hols 11201 11217 0.14 11932 12291 3.01

Saarland 4017 4251 5.83 4402 4731 7.47

Hamburg 10099 9618 − 4.76 12178 11079 − 9.02

Bremen 2917 3552 21.77 2990 3862 29.16

West Germany 283391 272831 − 3.73 322294 309474 − 3.98

Saxony 15890 17855 12.37 17344 19672 13.42

Sax-Anh 9447 10688 13.14 10247 11654 13.73

TH 8629 9757 13.07 9444 10764 13.98

BB 8907 9942 11.62 10163 11426 12.42

MV 6260 7116 13.67 6879 7862 14.29

East Germany 49133 55357 12.67 54077 61378 13.5

Berlin 13787 18123 31.45 14381 19902 38.39

Total Germany 346311 346311 0 390752 390752 0

Sources: Bundesfinanzministerium (Mill. DM).

externalities potentially emerging from the consolidation of a vastly underde-
veloped regional economy drove federal and regional elites to accept a massive
redistributive effort. As a corollary, this section closes the chapter by taking a
succinct look at the dynamics that followed. Clearly, from this point forward,
distributive tensions are no longer exogenous. Yet, a careful overview of the
conflicts that emerged, and how they were resolved, sheds additional light on
the interplay between economic geography and political representation in mod-
ern Germany, ultimately providing additional leverage to empirically evaluate
the logic posited in this topic.
Table 6.7 illustrates the redistributive implications of the arrangements
resulting from the Solidarity Pact by looking at the financial power of the
l ander before and after FA applies in 1996 and 2000. Table 6.7 conveys a
picture in which three large western l ander (Bavaria, Buden-Wurttemberg,
and especially Hesse) meet most of the costs, and suggests that the scope of
this redistributive effort remained fairly stable during the second half of the
1990s.
Interestingly, the persistence of the effort runs parallel to a transformation
of the structure of economic and political incentives at work during the early
period post-Reunification.