Devolutionary lessons from Bavaria

R.D. Kernohan

I've just had the benefit of a German reprisal. An Edinburgh exchange group to which I belong decided that our last guests from our twinned-city of Munich should undergo a tour of the Scottish Parliament. When we returned the visit we found unsurprisingly that our usual Rathaus beer-and-sausage civic reception had been supplemented by a more Spartan visit to the State Parliament of Bavaria.
     Things were quiet for the members of the Landtag were in the throes of an election from which not all returned. It had no great issues but ended more than 40 years of unshared power of the Christian Social Union, which insists that it is a sister-party of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, not a provincial part. The beneficiaries were not the Socialists but Greens, Liberals (really rather conservative), and 'free voters' who want to be independent of parties but need to form an alliance to cross the 5% threshold which gives benefit of proportional representation. Like Scotland, Bavaria uses a blend of single-member and list systems, but one with more potential for independent initiatives.
     Bavarians are now enjoying the unaccustomed pleasures of coalition negotiations and watching heads roll in the CSU, severely shaken but still predominant with 92 seats out of 187. But they're also enjoying one of the continuing success stories of post-war Germany: the integration in the national federal system of a strong sense of identity and local patriotism in Freistaat Bayern.
     I never understood why so many Scottish enthusiasts for self-government and devolution seemed to focus European comparisons on Catalonia when there are far more smoothly working and congenial examples of internal autonomy in Germany. Of these Bavaria is the most relevant to Scotland, for its self-government is also an emotional assertion of historic identity in a way scarcely true of Lower Saxony or North Rhine-Westphalia.
     Bavaria houses its Parliament (as Scotland might have done) in one of its historic buildings, the old royal educational foundation of the Maximilianeum, with a modest debating chamber beside a few grand reception-rooms and a panoramic view over Munich. It has its white and blue flag and its State anthem, as well as the stereotypes based on Lederhosen, funny hats, dialect, beer, and still more beer. Like Aberdeen in matters of financial prudence, it never seems sure how far to resent its reputation and how eagerly to cultivate it.
     It has also a more up-market stereotype as homeground of a rather reactionary intellectual Pope and bastion of small-town and rural Roman Catholicism. But that view is at odds with the diversity of modern Bavaria, within and beyond the 59% of the population recorded as Catholic. (About a quarter is Protestant, ranging from fairly nominal to deeply committed, among the latter being Günther Beckstein, the CSU state premier who resigned after the election setback.) For Bavaria is Nuremberg and Bayreuth, Siemens and BMW, as well as castles of the mad King Ludwig, cowbell Alpine pastures, and (as I saw) sprinkling horses with holy water. And Munich has long been a magnet drawing academic, economic, cultural, and artistic talent from all over Germany. It has also expanded in a way which ensures commuter transport and airport expansion are vote-losing issues for politicians. Read all about it in the Süddeutsche Zeitung – the kind of paper the Guardian might have been had it found the courage to stay in Manchester. Or keep track of Bavarian broadcasting which, like Cologne and Hamburg's, shows how much Britain lost when the BBC pitched Radio Scotland downmarket and kept English provincial cities in London's shadow.

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