ZParl Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen

In September 2014, New Zealand’s voters elected a new parliament. This was already the seventh election under a mixed-member proportional system (MMP) similar to the one used in Germany. Particular features of MMP in New Zealand include special...

In the 2014 Congressional election the Republican party was able to expand its majority in the House of Representatives while winning back the majority in the Senate, resulting in a “divided government” in the 114th U.S. Congress. It became...

In Germany’s political system elections are held on different political levels with electoralsystems that differ across time and levels. Making use of this variance and analyzing local,state, federal, and European elections since 1990, our...

Parliament’s right of inquiry, one of the most important tools of the opposition to control the government backed by the parliamentary majority, was designed as a minority right for the first time in Germany. In contrast to the optional minority...

In the euro crisis, the committees of the Bundestag have regularly discussed draft laws for the implementation of euro rescue measures, which were previously agreed on by the heads of state and government of the EU. This article traces the control...

Central and Eastern European (CEE) parliaments could only briefly enjoy the new powers they gathered during and after the regime changes of 1989/1990. Already before the end of the 1990s, they were confronted with very low trust levels in the...

25 years after the breakdown of communism, all Central-Eastern European parliaments are consolidated, highly functional constitutional institutions that play a key role in the respective political systems. Despite all national specifics developed...

Eurasian representative assemblies are not democratic legislatures but neither are they merely imitating them. A comparative analysis of their constitutionally granted competencies, performance and internal organization suggests the emergence of...

Recent studies on parliamentary democracies have stated that prime ministers’ duration of office is comparably lower in Central Eastern than in Western Europe. Analyzing the cases of 90 prime ministers in eleven countries of Central Eastern Europe...

The article describes the recent changes of parliamentary rules in Hungary and demonstrates which far-reaching consequences institutional changes below the constitutional level can have. It analyses the changes after 2010, which were enacted by the...