ZParl Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen

In the current debate on the causes of “unequal democracy”, the perspectives of members of parliament have hardly been taken into account, despite their expert status and their important role in representative democracy . This article therefore...

How is parliamentary communication changing as a result of parliaments, committees, and MPs using digital media? There are three important changes . First, parliamentary commu- nication is becoming more pluralized; more parliamentary voices are...

Erdoğan’s success in the May 2023 presidential election came as a surprise to many . It masks long-term changes in Turkey’s party system . One constant, however, is the strong support for Erdoğan in many Western European migration societies ....

When David Cameron wanted to become Prime Minister in 2010 he had to accept a Fixed-term Parliaments Act to cement the Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition government . Under the rules of the Act the prime minister no longer had the authority...

In the fall of 2017, before the Bundestag elections, the 18th German Bundestag decided that in future the first session of a new election period would no longer be opened by the oldest member in terms of years of age, but by the one who has been a...

After a rather boring election campaign the Social-Democrats (SPD) managed to achieve the position of the strongest party again which they lost to the Christian-Democrats (CDU) in 2019 . The CDU and the Left Party defended more or less their last...

Until 2017 “two blocks” dominated the French political party system . Alternative governments of the left and of the bourgeois-conservative camp have alternated since the 1960s . Due to the drastic losses of the traditional parties as Les...

Coalition negotiations play a key role in government formation, but they have not been analyzed much in detail . In Germany, the past decades have seen an ongoing differentiation of their organization, leading to a complex multi-level negotiation...

The “doppelter Pukelsheim”, as the biproportional divisor method with standard rounding is colloquially called, enjoys great popularity in Switzerland . For good reason: the new method of distributing parliamentary seats among the parties better...

Private political financing is protected by constitutional law . Private persons supporting political parties by donations, sponsoring or other financial instruments exercise their fundamental right to political participation . However, private...

To what extent does contemporary political science successfully approach political representation with regard to power – that is, in terms of a relationship of domination? The Italian sociologist and political scientist Carlo Mongardini (1938 –...

This article argues that Karl Lauterbach accomplished the office of federal secretary of health mainly due to his Twitter activities and the concomitant exposure in political TV talk shows . Lauterbach had little intraparty support after his failed...

In March 2023, the German Bundestag passed legislation to reform the electoral law with the votes of the governing coalition of SPD, Greens and FDP to prevent the parliament from growing beyond its regular number of seats . Contrary to an initial...

Discussions on the reform of the electoral law have so far mostly been conducted without the perspective of the sovereign . Therefore, given the current reform discussion and the change of the electoral law in Baden-Württemberg, we examine whether...

Can sitting Minister-Presidents rely on an incumbency advantage in German state parliament elections despite the indirect nature of their election? Changes in the office of the Minister-President after (and between) state parliament elections in...

Over the course of the process of transformation in East Germany elites from the West moved into the new Bundesländer of the East . This transfer took place in a number of domains of society including the political system of the new Bundesländer ....

From the beginning, the red-red-green coalition formed after the election of 2016 had to fight against severe problems . Especially the SPD lost public support, which led to the replacement of Michael Müller by Franziska Giffey as leading candidate...

The state election in Lower Saxony on October 9, 2022, was the first election in Germany following the termination of Russian gas supplies to Western Europe . The election campaign was therefore dominated by the energy crisis and the associated...

With the first black-green government coalition in a major territorial state in Germany, Hessian state politics (once again) set relevant political accents that have a signal effect on federal policy . What was initially seen as a risky experiment...

This article examines the debate surrounding the proposed lowering of the voting age from eighteen to sixteen for German Bundestag elections, from a political science perspective . The author carefully considers and counters the arguments raised by...