ZParl Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen

In fundamental aspects the management of the third Grand Coalition does not differ from the conflict handling in other coalitions. The importance of coalition agreements as an instrument of conflict reduction has grown, although it tends to decrease...

At two recent occasions the State Parliament of Baden-Wurttemberg used the instrument of time-limited committees of enquiry. After analyzing the lawfulness of such time-limitations the conclusion is reached that they are legal. Installing...

Pre-election polls in the run up to the 2013 general election saw the liberal party FDP consistently over five percent. At the end of election night, however, the party failed to surpass the five-percent electoral threshold and consequently – for...

The question whether it is institutional rules or political-cultural features that explain fluctuations in parliaments is examined for the sub-national level in Switzerland for all 26 cantonal legislatures between 1960 and 2012. The findings clearly...

A free profession of survey research – just as a free press – serves as a corrective to a democratic government. A free survey research poses a threat to authoritarian regimes. That is why most authoritarian regimes try to gain control over...

In order to establish whether published polls influenced the voters’ decision-making processes in the run up to the German parliamentary election 2013 the cognitive effects on the development of voters’ expectations regarding election results...

In the run up to the German federal election of 2013, forecasts about who would win attracted considerable attention. Leaving casual punditry aside, the more serious forecasts were predominantly based on opinion polls. Polls offer a good snapshot in...

a considerable impact on voters (and in turn on election results). However, research in this field should analyze the necessary conditions for poll effects in more detail in order to understand these postulated impacts. Opinion polls can only affect...

On May 10, 2015 the federal state of Bremen applied an electoral system with five votesand the possibility of accumulating and cross-voting for the second time. The participationrate declined to 50.2 percent, the lowest level ever. Contrary to the...

The result of the British general election surprised the pollsters. They had expected a neck and neck race of the two big parties. They did not predict a clear majority for either of them but a new coalition government. The election produced,...

About half of German voters have a correct understanding of the German electoral system. The other half incorrectly believes that either the first vote or that the first and second vote together are decisive for the distribution of seats. As a...

Prior to the state elections in Bremen, it looked like the governing coalition of SPD and Greens would score a comfortable victory despite predicted losses for the Greens and growing public discontent with the coalition’s rigid policy of cutbacks....

After having governed successfully for four years and being led by widely respected Mayor Olaf Scholz, the SPD was the clear favorite when going into the election of the Hamburg state parliament on February 15, 2015. There was no doubt that the...

The results of the 2014 election to the Swedish Riksdag led to a change as well as to a severe crisis of government. The strengthened Sverigedemokraterna disrupted the delicate balance of power in Sweden’s negotiation democracy with its minority...

The 2011 reforms of the laws guiding the elections to the state parliaments in Bremen and Hamburg introduced systems of combined open and closed list proportional representation: Each voter can now cast five votes for party lists (list vote) and/or...

Previous studies have characterized the U.S. Congress as uniformly weak in carrying out its constitutional responsibility in the politics of military interventions vis-a-vis the president. The picture, however, has more nuances when not only...