ZParl Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen

As a result of demographic change, young voters are increasingly losing influence in elections . Children and adolescents below voting age have no voting rights at all, yet are subject to policy and law . Previous proposals to combat these...

Roll-call votes play an important role in parliamentary research, but have so far focused almost exclusively on plenary votes due to a lack of data . In a transparency offensive, the European Parliament (EP) decided in 2014 to make roll-call votes...

In 2023, only 22 .4 percent of the members entitled to vote participated in the social insurance elections, i .e . the third biggest election in Germany . Against this backdrop, the paper describes the functions of the sectoral quasi-parliaments in...

This paper focuses on a subset of the interest group population in the German health policy sector . Analyzing the invitation lists to all public hearings the health committee of the German Bundestag carried out between the 15th and the 19th...

Since the European elections in 2014, the number of parties elected to the European Parliament (EP) in Germany has more than doubled . The removal of the 5-percent threshold in electoral law gave seven small(est) parties with an increasing number of...

The British party system has been historically defined by two major parties, the Conservatives and the Labour Party . Parliamentary and election rules have reinforced this dominance which, in the twenty first century, is facing major challenges ....

The parliamentary elections to South Korea’s 22nd National Assembly on April 10, 2024, were a classic mid-term election occurring during the five-year term of conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol, who had assumed office two years earlier . The...

Parliaments have long been concerned with taking data protection into account in their work . However, since the GDPR entered into force, there has been intense debate as to whether it also applies to core parliamentary activities – in particular...

This essay examines the acceleration of legislative procedures and fast-track legislation based on the legal framework of constitutional law, rules of procedure and parliamentary practice in the Federal Republic of Germany . In the multi-sectional...

After 14 years in opposition, Labour is back in power . A governing party in conflict with itself, big and unresolved economic problems, and a Scottish National Party that managed to steer itself in a political cul-de-sac made change possible . The...

The article describes and explains the challenges that Israeli democracy has experienced since 2019 when the constitutional crisis joined other crises the country has to cope with . Israel with its current extreme right-wing government has religious...

The UK’s departure from the EU caused significant challenges in terms of legal continuity, and specifically how to retain EU law after Brexit to avoid a “cliff edge” scenario . Once Brexit was completed, the focus shifted to reforming or...

The development of case law on parliamentary law at state level since 2018 has essentially been shaped by the widespread entry of the AfD into the state parliaments . While the party’s communication style led to an increase in calls to order, the...

In recent years, the European Parliament has regularly positioned itself as a staunch defender of the European Union’s fundamental values . It has repeatedly denounced grievances in member states as well as inaction by the Union’s other bodies ....

The “dignity” of Parliament is an undefined legal concept, the application of which must, on the one hand, leave room for the freedom of the political mandate of Members of Parliament under Article 38 (1) sentence 2 of the Basic Law and take...

The most striking result of the parliamentary elections in South Africa of May 29, 2024 was that, for the first time since the introduction of democratic elections in 1994, the ANC had lost its majority . As a liberation movement against white...

The legislative process of assent laws at the federal level in Germany reveals a constitutional dilemma . The parties represented in the federal government and in the federal opposition sometimes use the Bundesrat to distinguish themselves...