Regions and Regionalization in the Five New Länder of Eastern Germany

Eastern Germany’s transformation process after unification has been unique among the former socialist eastern European countries, because of the degree to which ‘western’ (Germany’s) institutional, societal and economic structures, and related values and policy goals, were literally extended into the new eastern Lander. This reflected the accession of the former GDR to West Germany. There has been much uncertainty and insecurity within the new system of governance in eastern Germany, because most actors had little or no prior experience of democratic principles of local and regional government, and with managing market forces and business interests. The unprecedented extent of economic change challenged a regulatory system tailored to, and honed by, gradual, ‘orderly’ processes of economic development. This had permitted a conventional system of hierarchically organized economic regulation with fixed territories and a strong emphasis on spatial planning. The reconfiguring space economy challenged this conventional relationship between fixed territories of jurisdiction and economic activity, and not only in eastern Germany (see Barnes and Ledebur, 1998). There are signs that government institutions, federal to local, are beginning to respond to these challenges by discussing possible flexibilization (ARL, 1996) in the boundedness (Bennett, 1997) of policy-making spaces, so as to allow their adjustment to increasingly more variable economic territories. Only then can a sufficiently ‘close match’ and thus policy effectiveness be achieved (Barnes and Ledebur, 1998). This eurocommentary will discuss the process of establishing new ‘western-style’ formalized regions in eastern Germany immediately after unification, and evidence of differential re-interpretations in favour of more flexible forms of regionalization, through inter-urban collaboration (Aigner and Miosga, 1994). General institutional provision for formal regions