Everyone has heard of Texas or California, but have you ever heard of the states that make up Germany? German politics is so much more than Merkel and the states are hugely important. A short introduction to the Bundesländer:

Germany is a federal republic comprising 16 states from Schleswig-Holstein in the north to Bavaria in the south. They differ widely in terms of population, area and culture. North Rhine-Westphalia is the most populous with a population of more than 17 million

Germans differentiate between 3 Stadtstaaten (city states) and 13 Flächenländer (roughly area states). The city states are Hamburg, Berlin and Bremen (although the state of Bremen actually consists of more than just the city of Bremen, see below).

For obvious historical reasons, the division of power is the basic idea underlying Germany’s federal constitution. A lot of power is devolved to the states in areas like health or education and they also participate in national decision-making through the Bundesrat

The Bundesrat represents the interests of the states in Berlin. The members of the Bundesrat aren't elected directly, they are sent by their respective states. More populous states get more votes but it's not directly proportional. Smaller states get a bonus, basically

A lot of people think of Germany as a strongly-centralised state because they learned about Nazi Germany in school but Germany has a long history of regional power centres. This is a country that used to be incredibly fragmented and regional identities are still strong

Germans are always debating this structure. Some think power should be more centralised, others think some states should be merged to make the system more efficient. Others see the diffusion of power as a strength. During the pandemic, those discussions were often pretty heated

There's also the argument that Germany does well in the EU (and multilateral settings more generally) because Germans are used to compromising due to domestic political structures. Power always overlaps, there are constant coalitions. If you can't compromise, you get nothing done

Anyway, I posted this to provide a little context to Germany's struggle with the pandemic (and Merkel's role in all of it). Hope it was useful to some of you. Have a good evening.