ZParl Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen

Following allegations that he had accepted undue advantages in his position, a referendum was held on 6 November 2022 to recall the mayor of Frankfurt, Peter Feldmann . The article first presents the legal framework of the recall election in Hesse...

Why do women parliamentarians perceive the issue of female underrepresentation in parliaments and politics as a problem at all? This question arises directly from Hanna Fenichel Pitkins assessment that it remains unclear to what extent descriptive...

Responsiveness of politicians to the citizens is one of the key characteristics of a representa- tive democracy . It can be measured by whether and to what extent the preferences of politi- cians and the population coincide . Particularly in times...

From its very beginning, the Covid-19 pandemic was politicized in the United States . Then- President Donald Trump saw it was little more than another attempt by his political oppo- nents and the media to harm his electoral chances . The Democratic...

The five percent hurdle for the Bundestag has proven its worth and should be retained . On the one hand, it was able to keep splinter parties out of the Bundestag and, on the other hand, it did not block the way for newly founded parties to enter...

Republicans went into the 2022 election year expecting to capture both chambers of Con- gress . The eventual results turned out to be disappointing, however . The seizure of parlia- mentary power was hindered by their own cadre of candidates in...

Covid-19 presented a major external shock to the United States governmental system . The system itself, crafted in the 18th century, was not designed to easily absorb this shock . The U .S . government is divided by the Constitution in two important...

The two handbooks of the history of political parties in Germany between 1789 and 1945 that Dieter Fricke published in Jena in the 1960s through to the 1980s continue to be con- sidered the gold standard for research on this subject . Yet, though...

Should the CDU/CSU open up itself politically to the Left and the AfD? This question has recently been asked more frequently, especially in the east of the Federal Republic of Ger- many, although the CDU/CSU, as well as the common Bundestag...

One function of national parliaments is to transpose EU law into the domestic legal order . This article examines whether and under what conditions opposition parties in the Bunde- stag support such an implementation . The results of a statistical...

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...