Colloquium: The (Ir)Relevance of Institutional Proliferation: Evidence from Foreigners' Advisory Councils

ABSTRACT: We analyze whether foreigners’ advisory councils (FACs) contribute to the integration offoreign residents. FACs, elected by and consisting of foreign residents, are supposed toadvise local councils on all matters concerning foreign residents. We use exclusive data onthe staggered rule-based adoption of FACs in the German states of Hesse and NRW anddata on integration-relevant outcomes for 2005-2023. Within a fuzzy RD framework, we find thatFACs have no causal impact on integration-related outcomes (provision and take-up of integrationcourses, % foreigners’ children in public childcare, % foreigners employed). A text analysisof hand-collected local council meeting minutes shows that FACs are mainly mentionedin the context of administrative tasks and hardly affect the content of council deliberations.Our results are in line with pessimistic expectations on FAC effectiveness based on a surveyamong local policymakers which attribute our null results to low legislative power,political legitimacy and commitment of FACs.