Thesis--Freie Universität Berlin. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 348-361).

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The main focus of this study is on the question of why political institutions change. By extension, the study is also about explaining and predicting the direction of change. Put simply, the study postulates that political institutions will change in order to be congruent with the society. / Change is analysed within the context of two federal structures, the Federal Republic of Germany and Belgium. During the same time period from 1949 to 1993, one transformed from a unitary state into a loose federation while the decentralised federation consolidated and became central. The puzzle which the research project deals with is about this change: Why did the institutions of 1949 fail to survive? / The prevailing institutionalist logic in comparative politics would suggest that once in place, institutions would have socialised the political actors into the existing structure by providing veto points in such a way that institutions would have been reproduced over time, but this has not been the case. Furthermore, why has change come about in two opposing directions, centralising and decentralising, despite many common characteristics between the two cases? / This study is based on a theory of congruence which argues that political institutions change in order to reflect underlying societal structures. More specifically, the argument is that political institutions in federal structures change to correspond to the ethno-linguistic make-up of the country. Accordingly, the unitary state of Belgium has changed its political institutions in order to accommodate the Flemings, Walloons and Bruxellois; while Federal Germany has centralised many issues despite explicit constitutional clauses against such changes. / According to the theory of congruence, when confronted with an ethno-linguistic structure that does not match the political one, the political structure changes; not automatically, but through the pressure of public policy concerns pursued by political actors. The ethno-linguistic community is the primary collectivity for which public policy decisions are made. The choices available to political actors are constrained by the demarcations of this societal composition. Decision makers might disagree over the substance of the policies, but they share the choice of venue in the form of the ethnolinguistic 'nation'. In case of a discrepancy between the ethno-linguistic societal structure and the political structure, public policy concerns wold exert a pressure towards congruence by demarcating a social collectivity for which policies are made different from the one set up by the political institutions. Thus, if the 'nation' is bigger than the unit that marked off by political institutions, the tendency would be towards amalgamation with the other subunits of the 'nation' and centralisation. If, on the other hand, the 'nation' is smaller than the unit defined by the political institutions, there would be devolutionary pressures on the unitary institutions. / The empirical research was carried out on two policy areas, education and mass media, through a paired comparison of Flanders and Wallonia in Belgium and Baden-Wurttemberg and North Rhine Westphalia in the Federal Republic of Germany.