Government Ideology and Tuition Fees in the German Federal States

In January 2005, the Federal Constitutional Court gave the federal states the freedom to decide on whether to raise tuition fees, giving the federal states an educational policy instrument that they previously did not have. Using such a natural experiment it is possible to test political economy’s “partisan hypothesis”: the extent to which left-of-centre and right-of-centre governments pursue different policies. The results show that only the right-leaning state governments have instituted tuition fees.