Shifting Territorial Politics in Germany after the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Legacy Impacts of Crisis Governance

While recent scholarship has considered the performance and impact of federal systems of governance during the COVID-19 pandemic, less attention has been paid to the pandemic’s longer-term impacts on territorial relations. This article examines those impacts in the case of Germany based on an interpretative approach to territorial governance. Building on Bevir and Rhodes’s concept of ‘situated agency’, it sheds light on the actions of the German Länder governments under specific crisis circumstances, and the extent to which, if at all, pandemic experiences ultimately reshaped everyday practices of territorial cooperation and governance in Germany. Our analysis draws upon structured interviews with senior officials in a cross-sectional sample of the German Länder, conducted in early 2024. The findings suggest crisis governance throughout the COVID-19 pandemic had a discernible but rather subtle impact on territorial relations in Germany. We argue this lack of change can be attributed not only to the strong institutional traditions and norms of German federalism, which limited the scope for innovation, but also to the emergence of crisis governance as a ‘new normal’ in response to domestic and international challenges, changing the conditions under which situated agency can be exercised in a complex territorial system like Germany’s.