ZParl Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen

In Germany, Independent Local Lists (UWG) have become an integral part of local politics in recent decades . Despite their growing political importance, the reasons for their electoral rise have hardly been researched . Recent studies argue that...

Since the 1990s, direct democracy has been the favored method to combat the weakness of representative institutions in Germany . In recent years, its proponents-not least the Greens and the SPD-have had a change of heart . Instead of plebiscitary...

The digital transformation is permanently changing the government, administration, and society . This process is being intensified by the much-discussed technologies of artificial intelligence, and poses a variety of challenges for parliaments and...

Despite their crucial role for democratic decision-making, local elections receive little atten­tion from political science research . To overcome this shortcoming, the article analyses the Bavarian local elections of 2020 . Although the CSU...

Voter turnout in German local elections has only been partially examined in comparative analysis . Derived from the state of research, this analysis focuses-on the link between explanatory factors and voter turnout especially in city council and...

In order to analyze which topics are used by the German and Austrian Green parties when proposing bills in times of Grand Coalitions, we use data from a content analysis of all bills these parties proposed from 2007-2008 and 2013-2017 based on the...

Government stability in the German Bundestag is traditionally tied to a parliamentary majority and an opposition minority . Nonetheless, minority governments in other Western democracies show that, despite the lack of a parliamentary majority, they...

This study analyzes how German political actors at the federal and state levels perceive the opportunities and risks of political poll reporting . A quantitative online survey of Members of the Bundestag and all German state parliaments shows that...

In a 2020 constitutional referendum on the 20th and 21st of September 2020, Italians voted to reduce the number of members of parliament from 945 to 600 . With a turnout of 51 percent, 70 percent voted in favor of this proposal . The article...

In Germany, there are an estimated 200,000 seats to be filled at the local level in city and municipal councils, city council assemblies, and district councils . It is of fundamental importance for the functioning of local democracy that a...

For the first time, in 2013 the electoral law introduced adjustment seats to compensate for surplus seats at the federal level . For the last two elections, this led to a considerable increase of the Bundestag’s size . The reform debate to shrink...

The German electoral law to the federal parliament was reformed in 2011 and in 2013 . While political scientists have extensively evaluated consequences of these reforms, the role of the public discourse has been largely neglected . We analyze...

According to the Rules of Procedure of the German Bundestag (”GOBT”), every Member of Parliament is granted a five minutes’ verbal explanation of vote . It is granted for nearly every kind of vote in the House . The verbal explanation is often...

The legal framework of the parliamentary right of interpellation and the executive’s obligation to respond to these questions has traditionally been a field of contention between the government and the opposition . The Federal Constitutional Court...

The two general elections held in Italy in 2013 and 2018 were particularly significant: While the anti‑systemic Five Star Movement and the Lega were hugely successful, established parties such as Forza Italia and Partito Democratico fell behind ....