ZParl Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen

Thise essay examines fast-track legislation in the parliamentary practice of the Federal Republic of Germany from a legal perspective with an empirically historical approach . Fast- track legislation is characterized by an acceleration of all...

Women currently make up 30 percent of German party members . Among new members, this proportion is only slightly higher at one third . Consequently, there are still barriers to women‘s participation in party politics in Germany . This article...

The German party system has changed profoundly in recent decades . This has implications for the functioning of democratic institutions . The effects are almost entirely negative: gov- ernment formation has become more difficult, the opposition has...

In April 2024, a scenario analysis on the resilience of the Thuringian constitutional and legal system was presented in the Thuringian state parliament with a view to the possible participation of an authoritarian populist party in government after...

Analysing local elections and local party competition is rarely the focus of political science research . In the few cases where this does happen, it is primarily the large cities or mayoral elections that are at the centre of scholars’ research...

Corresponding to the party systems at the German federal and state level the local party systems in the German municipalities have become increasingly fragmented . Local politics is strongly influenced by the size of the self-administrating...

In 2023 the German Bundestag set up a Citizens’ Assembly on food politics . The institu- tional design was consistent with suggestions made by proponents of deliberative democ- racy like James Fishkin or Peter Dienel . This included the selection...

In state elections in Bremen and Hamburg and local elections in Lower Saxony, voters have the opportunity to vote directly for one or more candidates or to confirm the order of the lists proposed by the parties . The ratio of votes cast for the...

Electoral thresholds in the context of parliamentary elections are an instrument to prevent a fragmentation of parliaments and facilitate the formation of a coalition government . However, the thresholds also introduce distortions and modify the...

On the 19th December 2023, the verdict of the BVerfG on the Berlin Chaos election of 26th September 2021 was issued . The verdict only refers to the Bundestag election, which took place on that day together with the elections to the Berlin House of...

Berlin’s state parliament approved of a comprehensive reform of its question rights at the start of 2014: So-called big questions were abolished, and the oral questions were reduced to a spontaneous form . Since then, there have been only simple...

The right-wing party AfD was successful in being re-elected to the German Bundestag in the year 2021, even though – compared with the previous parliamentary elections (2017) – with a smaller vote share (10 .3 percent instead of 12 .6 percent)...

The election of the mayor of the city of Kassel in March 2023 was special in two respects: firstly, in the first round of voting, a candidate from the SPD ran against the incumbent mayor, who was also a member of the SPD but was running as an...

The Bavarian election on October 8, 2023, has led to a shift to the right . The Free Voters and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) are the election winners and are once again making significant gains compared to 2018 . The parties of the Berlin...

The Hesse state election on October 8, 2023, took place in a polarized political context that was characterized by a decreasing support for the parties of the federal government and the several implications of Russia’s attack on Ukraine for German...

The 8th state parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has 79 members in six parlia- mentary party groups, which are represented with the following numbers of seats: SPD 34, AfD 14, CDU 12, Left Party 9, Greens and FDP with 5 each . A dispute...

The relationship between federalism and parliamentary democracy was long considered to be susceptible to functional problems, and thus in parts incompatible . Accordingly, cross- level political coordination, which is necessary for federalism in...

The majority of German state parliaments offer simulation games for adolescents . These events are designed to teach young people about the processes of intra-parliamentary will formation and decision-making . This article presents a survey of the...

In empirical research on political representation, the congruence between the attitudes of voters and those elected is considered a good measure of political responsiveness . Using the example of four selected political orientations, this article...