ZParl Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen

Do governments use their control of the parliamentary agenda to influence the allocation of plenary time and devote relatively less time to important legislation? Using an original dataset comprising all plenary debates during two parliamentary...

In 2018 the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg installed a commission of experts to inspect the existing retirement income system of its parliamentarians (Altersversorgung des Abgeordneten) . The commission report prompts a comparison between...

The outcome of the election marks a deep shift not only in Bavarian politics but also corresponds to Germany’s ongoing restructuring of its electorate and the changing configuration of its party system at large: (1) The two catch-all parties...

Federal politics has often influenced elections to the Hesse state parliament . This was also true for the election 2018, which was not only decisive for the future of the incumbent black-green coalition government led by Prime Minister Volker...

How do the members of parliament use hecklings and other intermediate reactions in the Baden-Württemberg state parliament? Does the AfD as a new party in parliament differ from the other political groups? An automatic analysis of all interruptive...

A member of the Rhineland-Palatine state parliament failed in his appeal to the state Constitutional Court against his expulsion from the parliamentary group AfD (Alternative for Germany) . His parliamentary group had excluded him due to his...

One reason why special German broadcast programs like „ARD Brennpunkt“ and „ZDF spezial“ fulfill their function in crisis communication is that politicians appear in them . In the course of an interdisciplinary research project on media...

Expulsions of delegates from parliamentary factions are impactful, albeit rare, events . Following a discussion in the German Association for Parliamentary Affairs in 2004, the procedural rules of more than two-thirds of the parliamentary parties...

Decisions on the size of a parliament are genuinely political . Insofar it seems only logical that the few studies dealing with this topic from a political science perspective fail to provide unequivocal criteria that would allow politicians to pick...

The first time arrival of the AfD in the Bundestag focused public attention on the distribution of committee chairmanships . The process of determining who chairs which committees is still based on an old German parliamentary custom whereby the...

The 2017 election brought significant changes to the membership of the German Bundestag. The parliament became much larger (709 seats) and the entry of 291 new deputies marked a new turnover record. Also, for the first time since unification, the...

Apart from gender and age, no other socio-structural characteristics of party members are reliably captured in the membership registers of the German parties. A differentiated analysis of the social anchoring of the German party system can therefore...

Modern election research starts with the study “The People’s Choice” by Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet (1944). Almost 75 years after the publication of this canonical work, a study was carried out on the occasion of the...

Up to this day, German Christian Democrats have ruled out any cooperation with the Left Party, citing its alleged radicalism and extremism. Yet in recent months, leading members of the CDU have challenged this strategy, suggesting “pragmatism”...

In Germany political parties are bound by the democratic principles as stated in Art. 21 I 3 GG. Democratic principles are minimum requirements for the design of the internal party decision-making process. These minima include, among other things, a...

The current debate on an amendment to the electoral law for the German Bundestag also includes a possible reduction of the number of districts. On behalf of the Federal Election Commissioner, the authors computed possible apportionment of districts...