Volume 49 (2018), Edition 3

Minor questions can be seen as one of the oldest and the most important tools for oversight by the opposition parties in the German Bundestag . The parliamentary statistics at the end of each legislative term give evidence how frequently they are...

The numbers of interpellations differ between the Bundestag and the German Land parliaments . These differences can be attributed to the setting of a deadline and the actual length of time that is used by governments for answering the questions ....

Landesgruppen are groups consisting of MPs from the same German state in a parliamentary party . Their meetings, committee and parliamentary group meetings are firmly anchored in the work routine of the Bundestag . Political science literature,...

The study of legislative behavior, party cohesion, and discipline is an important body of research in the study of parliaments . The present article adds to this literature by zooming in on a specific case - the voting patterns of the members of...

The German Bundestag election in 2017 lead to the largest parliament since the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany, namely to comprising 709 deputies . Since the last reform of the electoral law in 2013, the parliament’s extensive...

The results of the recent German federal election show a general increase in votes for small parties and consequently a growing number of non-represented votes in the German Bundestag . In order to solve this issue, the concept of a spare vote...

Proportional voting systems with open lists differ in the number of votes, the options to split and cumulate votes, and in additional mechanism like an allocation of list seats or electoral thresholds for candidates . The example of the elections in...

Political homophily and the confirmation bias lead to the development of echo chambers and information bubbles spurned by online participation . To a certain extent, this contradicts other empirical results, which detected a high level of conflict...

How did political parties apply Twitter during the 2017 German election campaign? Can we find similarities and differences in their communication tactics? These questions guide this study, which focuses on parties’ goals (vote seeking, office...

The manipulative use of so-called social bots on the Internet is increasingly regarded as a problem and danger to the public and to democracy . At the same time, however, research regarding the political use of social bots is nascent . Up to now,...

While the right-wing populist AfD has become the primary proponent of plebiscitary measures in Germany, parties of the left are now approaching direct democracy with increasing skepticism . One reason can be found in the sobering experiences that...

From a democratic-theoretical perspective, research on direct intra-party democracy has received only little attention . The case of SPD’s decision to once again have its members decide on whether to enter another Grand Coalition after the 2016...