ZParl Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen

The electoral success of the new party „NEOS - Das Neue Österreich und Liberales Fo- rum“ has consequences for the Austrian party system . Drawing on data from the Austrian National Election Study (AUTNES) that cover the political supply side...

Germany’s two-vote system - effective at the federal level since 1953 and adopted by most of the 16 states thereafter - shows several deficits . For instance, due to the fact that the electorate does not base its electoral choice on the local...

The German minority is concentrated in the area of Opole Silesia and is an important po- litical factor in this region . The Germans regularly gain many seats in the municipality, city and county councils, mostly in rural areas in the Eastern part...

In the campaigns prior to the election in Hesse in 2013 the expansion of the Frankfurt Airport was one of the dominating issues. It was also considered to be the main obstacle for the then emerging option of a coalition of the CDU and the Greens in...

The article is concerned with learning how the research services of German parliaments support members of parliaments in carrying out their duties in an independent and professional manner. Starting point of the analysis is the statement that the...

The article analyses the mayoral and district administrator’s elections in Saxony from 1994 to 2015. In these elections the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) won nearly all mandates with only a few exceptions and currently holds all district...

The analysis of voting behaviour - and particularly the reasons for the increasing vote share of the National Socialists (NSDAP) - in the Weimar Republic and the socio-structural composition of the electorate of the party have been scrutinized by...

The relevance of ideology for local political behaviour is a core interest of research on municipal governments. An extensive literature has considered the level of party orientation within municipal councils and for local voting behaviour. In...

This paper summarises the development of arguments, from 1996 to 2015, around the establishment of a means of retaining communication data (Vorratsdatenspeicherung). It focuses on the key parliamentary proceedings in both the German Bundestag and...

Research on vice presidents of German state parliaments is almost non-existent. yet, there seem to be tensions between the principles guiding the election of vice presidents and the tasks they are assigned. On the one hand vice presidents are...

The article analyzes the electoral law to become Prime Minister in the new Länder with regard to similarities and differences and it compares the regulations with the old German federal states. Therefore the approach can be seen as an inner-German...

Nudging refers to a much-debated political steering approach that relies on gentle interventions in decision architectures of individuals with the aim to shape their behaviour in a direction that is beneficial for them and/or for the society as a...

Direct democracy in German local politics is a topic, which is widely discussed in science and politics today facing questions of increasing input and output legitimacy of representative democracy. At the same time empirical knowledge about the...

Due to the great successes of the AfD in the three state elections of March 2016 there is an intensified discussion about the characteristics of the AfD’s electorate at the national level. Who votes for the AfD? Are there any social groups with an...

Due to the striking distance between citizens and politicians within their communities, the local level offers the best possibilities for political participation. However, protests such as “Stuttgart 21” suggest that the crisis of representative...

More and more often since the early 1990s there are complaints about democratic and legitimacy deficits of the European Union . In the EU member states new parties took up this issue. In the literature this new political line is termed...

The electoral system to the German Bundestag may not only lead to unnecessary enlargements of parliament but it is also not focused systematically on reducing the intraparty distortions. Those distortions played a substantial role in the political...