ZParl Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen

Following the electoral success of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives, this article explores the implications of this change in transatlantic relations . What is the position of the Republicans and which changes can be expected in...

Populism, pragmatism and progressivism have characterized the evolution of the Democratic Party from Barack Obama to Joe Biden . The expectations fueled by Obama’s populism have led to disappointment, social protest and a “socialist awakening”...

With the aim of limiting the size of the Bundestag to 598 members, the government plans to reform the federal electoral law based on an electoral system that links direct mandates fully to the proportional majority rule (capping system) . There are...

The 2022 Congressional elections have ended with ambivalent results . Typically, the party of the governing president loses seats in midterm elections, sometimes several dozens . In this regard, President Joe Biden and his party managed to achieve a...

In the Bundestag and in the state parliaments, parliamentary party groups (PPGs) have set up working groups that more or less mirror parliamentary committees and government departments . They serve the purpose to prepare policy positions; hence,...

For the first time in more than 60 years, in 2021 the SSW won a seat in the Bundestag again . The SSW is the political party of the Danish minority and the national Frisians and is exempt from the five per cent threshold other parties are subjected...

On 26 September 2021, the administration of the city state of Berlin had to cope with the election of the state’s House of Representatives, the election of the Bundestag and a referendum . Preparing for all of them together amounted to a large...

Political science has shown little interest in the office of the Federal President, and the legislative processes that deal with the office itself have not been considered at all . And yet they are particularly interesting from a...

Since the early 1960s scholars have tried to figure out how to explain coalition building . Meanwhile the approaches broadened from the classic office and policy seeking theory to more elaborated theories that include more factors and variables ....

The formal rules of parliamentary party groups (PPGs), their standing orders or rules of procedure have received scant attention in political science even though they have implications beyond the groups themselves . The project SOPiP (Standing...

Both the German Bundestag and Baden-Württemberg’s State Parliament offer the opportunity to the Members of Parliament to interpose questions to the speaker . It is not uncommon to address such questions to members of the government, whose right...

For several decades, a juridification process of the work of the intelligence and secret services has been taking place in all Western democracies . During the mid-1970s, the Federal Republic of Germany, under a social-liberal coalition, began to...

Parallel to the rise of the Fridays-For-Future-movement in 2018, the German party “Alliance 90/The Greens” was swept up in a wave of success . The influx of members and the electoral successes achieved are attributed to the professional...

Taking a proposal of a parliamentary group in the Landtag of the Saarland as a starting point, the paper discusses pros and cons as well as legal options to criminalize bribery in the context of party meetings that select candidates for general...

Inquiry committees are the opposition’s sharpest sword in the German Bundestag . In con- trast to the European Parliament, the U .S . Congress, and other international examples, however, TV or Internet transmissions of witness hearings are not...

Appointing vice presidents to the German state parliaments, as well as to the Bundestag, has come under greater public attention since the AfD has gained parliamentary representation . The AfD has often complained that it is prevented from...

The German voting advice application “Wahl-Kompass” allows the positioning of political parties in a political landscape with the two dimensions “conservative-traditional versus progressive ecological” and “redistribution versus personal...

Demands for allowing audio and visual recordings during sessions of parliamentary inquiry committees to ensure better public information have been brought forward not only since the introduction of legislation on these commission some 20 years ago ....

Tue 2022 legislative elections in France saw a new political player: NUPES, who won about a fourth of the National Assembly seats. Tuis ad hoc alliance of the four main parties of the left-wing political spectrum (socialists, greens, communists,...

President Emmanuel Macron hesitated about his renewed presidential candidacy. According to the polls, an election victory in the second round against his fiercest rival, the far-right Marine Le Pen, was by no means certain. Tue election campaign was...

Tue 2022 state election in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) was dominated by problems that lay beyond the reach of state politics: the climate crisis, Covid-19, the war in Eastern Europe, and inflation rates. Regarding state issues, many voters rated...