ZParl Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen

Intra-party selection procedures that precede the conference to nominate a party list are substantively understudied . Yet, they are of utmost importance to explain and evaluate what happens at the formal selection events . This study investigates...

Parties link the society with the state . It is their task to recruit members, integrate and train them for taking over leadership positions at different levels . Since 1990 the parties in (unified) Germany lose members . Does this prevent them from...

The political parties represented in the Bundestag have about 300 .000 active members, from whom all elected officials, from local councils to the European Parliament, are recruited . Due to the ongoing membership decline in parties the pool of...

Lately, the parliamentarian presence of women more and more has been a topic in public debates . These debates draw more on theoretical arguments instead of on empirical findings . How the gender gap between the German Bundestag’s composition and...

The early elections of December 2019 were held under special circumstances . The country was and still is divided politically and socially with regard to her future relationship with the EU . Brexit was one of the major election issues . Boris...

Before an election takes place, the party members select their parliamentary candidates . Their nomination decisions depend on their vision of an ideal candidate . Based on the IParl survey of party members participating in the candidate selection...

The rise of the right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has changed the German party landscape and challenged the other Bundestag parties . So far, this has not been paid attention to when looking at how parties fulfill their...

After the 2019 European election, national political actors and party officials in both the European Parliament as well as in the Council once again clashed over the selection of the Commission’s President, a controversy that also received...

While the perception processes and effects of political TV duels at the (sub-)national level have been examined in great detail, studies with a similar scope of analytical profoundness and detail for TV duels at the European level are largely...

The 2015 election to the Danish Folketing saw yet another change of government . Despite gains for the liberal-conservative Venstre, the incumbent centre-right government led by Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (Venstre) lost its majority due to...

Despite a higher turnout, the ninth elections to the European Parliament can still be considered as second-order elections . In Germany, the governing parties - in particular the CDU and SPD - experienced a significant loss compared to the 2017...

On the 24th of June 2018, for the first time Turkish citizens voted in separate elections for both parliament and the head of government . The constitutional amendments passed a year earlier in a controversial referendum became effective at the same...

The Filibuster, more a historical coincidence than a deliberate innovation, is one of the most powerful tools of minorities in the U .S . Senate . Historically known for never-ending talking marathons, it transformed the contemporary Senate into a...

In order to obtain a stable size of the Bundestag and at the same time maintain the proportional distribution of seats among the parties the introduction of multi-member districts should be considered . In each district, the parties would present...

The 2018 Congressional elections ended with an ambivalent result for both the Democrats and Republicans . The turnout recorded the best result in almost a century . The Democrats were able to recapture a significant majority in the U .S . House of...

It is questionable if the concept of the European election as a second-order national election is still a useful explanatory model or if the European election has become a relevant “Europeanized” election . Therefore, six hypotheses about the...

Every ten years, the districts to the U .S . House of Representatives are redrawn, a task that in most states falls to state legislatures . Electoral success for Republican state parties has provided the party with the opportunity to draw district...

Foreign policy is traditionally considered as one of the essential responsibilities of the executive . Recent parliamentary foreign policy initiatives, however, have brought forward a foreign policy claim . This does not only reflect the...

For millennia, Europe was a battlefield whose history was marked by countless wars among European peoples, blood and tears . The two world wars that cost millions of lives were the culmination of this development and a lesson rarely learned from...