ZParl Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen

The parliamentary party group (PPG) and the political party are regularly perceived by the public as a single entity; the success and failure of one is also attributed to the other. The aim of both is to gain public trust and approval for their own...

“Interactive representation” refers to an ongoing interaction between representatives and those they represent, where a reliable balance of responsiveness and leadership sustains widespread belief in the legitimacy of a system of government....

The analysis of party-voter congruence and divergence in Germany’s 2025 federal election draws on around 330,000 users of the “Wahl-Kompass” voting advice application, who donated the data. Five salient campaign issues are analyzed: the debt...

This article analyzes party positions and political polarization in the German party system during the 2025 federal election using the online voting advice applications “Wahl-O-Mat” and “WahlSwiper”. The findings show a strong programmatic...

The coalition negotiations following the Austrian National Council elections in 2024 developed into the longest government formation in the Second Republic and led to an oversized three-party coalition of the ÖVP, SPÖ and NEOS for the first time...

Traditional seat apportionment methods focus on proportionality in order to ensure equal suffrage. They may violate a property called majority preservation, though, as we expose on a number of recent elections in Germany. As such, a coalition of...