ZParl Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen

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 ....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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,...

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...

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...

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...

For the election on September 24, 2017, Angela Merkel’s second Grand Coalition had a remarkable record to present to German voters: stable economic growth, secure jobs and unemployment at a rare low . However, both coalition partners were dealt a...

When only glancing at the 2013 German federal election it seems to be an exceptional case, as it reversed the long-term trend of the German party system towards an ever-increasing fragmentation by a specific combination of short-term factors . The...

The empirical analysis of socio-economic characteristics of the 2017 German federal election results reveals that the AfD electorate largely corresponds to a cross-section of Germany’s society . In the course of changing from a mainly...

Since the beginning of the Federal Republic, Free Voters have been a dominant actor in German local politics . Despite their importance on the local level, their membership structure, identity and organization have hardly been studied . Based on a...

Declining numbers of party members in Europe have led to the presumption that over time parties will disappear as membership organizations . This view is opposed by the normalization thesis, which predicts that membership parties will survive albeit...

The 2017 German federal election was followed by a series of coalition talks that, since World War II, were unprecedented . After the exploratory talks between CDU/CSU, FDP and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen had failed, CDU/CSU and SPD started to open...

The formation of the federal government in Germany after the Bundestag election in 2017 was more complicated and took longer than ever before . This was not only caused by the election results but also by the early determination of the SPD to take...