ZParl Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen

State-level elections in Baden-Württemberg are run under an unusual mixed-member electoral system, which gives citizens just one vote, but does not use party lists - allocating seats in the second tier to the “best losers” from the plurality...

The result of the forthcoming federal elections in Germany might be a Bundestag consisting of six parliamentary parties. In this case creating a majority government will pose a challenge because the prolongation of the governing grand coalition is...

When the party was founded in 2013, AfD supporters earned above-average incomes but over time there has been a shift towards an average income. Despite this downward shift, AfD supporters are not overly worried about their own economic situation;...

The political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is not only a Euro-sceptic party but also a right-wing populist party. This classification is widely agreed upon in the journalistic debate whereas the academic literature comments cautiously on...

Under current law, there is no legal basis to reclaim financial subsidies provided to parliamentary parties of the German Bundestag if they have been used improperly and contrary to their statutory purpose. The article analyses the statutory regime...

Article 29 of the Deputy Act contains various provisions for the accounting of several remunerations from public funds, both with regard to the compensation of active members of the Bundestag and with regard to the pension entitlements of former...

Since they first entered a regional Parliament on state level (Bundesländer) in 2014, the far right “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) went on to being represented in nine further state parliaments. Given that the AfD was founded only two years...

The Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany, AfD) is a new German political party, which has been successful from the European Parliament elections in 2014 to various elections held on state level thereafter. To locate the AfD in the...

The Rules of Procedure of the German Parliaments grant parliamentary parties the right to request a parliamentary hearing. Is it unconstitutional to violate this right? The State Constitutional Court of Saxony decided that it is indeed...

Petitions against measures by official authorities are usually filed by individuals or groups to the responsible departments or parliaments . These requests or complaints are examined mostly without public debate by the petitions committee or the...

In 1985, German expatriates were given the right to vote in parliamentary elections . In 2012, the election law governing this right was challenged before the German Constitu- tional Court, which ruled that, among others, a mandatory residence...

Italian party pluralism is rooted in its constitutional history . On the basis of its three phases (1949 - 1994; 1994 - 2013; since 2013), both the relationship between electoral law and political parties and the ‘serious’ transformation of the...

The general elections on June 26, 2016 were the second elections within seven months . Already on December 20, 2015, the Spanish citizens were asked to elect a new government . The elections in December can be seen as a political watershed, which...

Since 2005, the German Bundestag offers the possibility to submit individual petitions through the use of an Internet form . In 2009, following a pilot experiment, it established the category of “public petitions” for issues of common interest,...