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

We study whether foreigners’ advisory councils (FACs, Ausländerbeiräte) improve the integration (success) of foreign residents in German municipalities. FACs consist of representatives elected by foreign residents and are supposed to advise local councils on all matters concerning foreign residents. We use exclusive data on FAC elections in the German state of Hesse for 2005-2023. Municipalities with at least 1,000 foreign residents are required to set up a foreigners’ advisory council. Given imperfect compliance, we implement fuzzy RD estimations and find that FACs have no impact on integration-relevant municipal outcomes such as integration courses offered, the share of foreigners employed or naturalizations. Analyzing local council minutes, FACs are mainly mentioned in the context of administrative tasks and do not seem to affect the content of council deliberations.