Abstiegserfahrungen in der Kommune und der Aufstieg Unabhängiger Wählergemeinschaften. Neue Befunde aus einem Mehrebenen-Kommunalwahlpanel

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-77
Author(s):  
Christina-Marie Juen ◽  
Markus Tepe ◽  
Michael Jankowski

In Germany, Independent Local Lists (UWG) have become an integral part of local politics in recent decades . Despite their growing political importance, the reasons for their electoral rise have hardly been researched . Recent studies argue that Independent Local Lists pursue anti-party positions, which makes them attractive to voters who are dissatisfied with the party system . Assuming that a decline of confidence in established parties corresponds with the experience of local deprivation, this contribution uses a multi-level panel data set to investigate how socio-economic (emigration, aging, declining tax revenue) and political­cultural (turnout, fragmentation) deprivation processes affect the electoral success of Inde­pendent Local Lists . The empirical findings suggest that Independent Local Lists are more successful in municipalities where voter turnout has fallen and political fragmentation has increased .

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802092534
Author(s):  
Michael Janoschka ◽  
Fabiola Mota

Local politics in Spain has triggered iconic shifts over the last few years, and the electoral success of new ‘movement parties’ in particular has dramatically challenged the political establishment. Between 2015 and 2019, many municipalities – including, crucially, the two biggest cities, Madrid and Barcelona – were governed by coalitions originating from anti-austerity, anti-eviction and pro-democracy struggles. This has significantly affected hegemonic and widely normalised discourses supporting the neoliberalisation of urban politics, and to some extent has also prompted novel governance approaches. Based on empirical research undertaken with local councillors, officials, consultants and activists, the article develops an in-depth analysis of governance transformations in the Spanish capital of Madrid. By doing so, it evaluates the ambiguities and contradictions that the government coalition Ahora Madrid was facing during the 2015–2019 legislative term. The debate stimulates critical reflections for academics, practitioners and movements on the transformative capacities that new municipalisms may enact, as well as the constraints faced by established multi-level urban governance regimes.


2020 ◽  
pp. 147892992096578
Author(s):  
Dan Ziebarth

A significant amount of literature has inspected the relationship between public–private partnerships and state and local government. This literature has focused primarily on how these agreements shape financing, economic development, and public policy measures. There is little research, however, on how improvement districts may affect political participation. There are many reasons to believe that these districts may raise levels of political participation, as they deeply affect state and local politics and shape the socioeconomic development of local communities. This article fills this gap in the literature by exploring the relationship between the establishment of local improvement districts and voter participation rates. An original data set is constructed from 18 state assembly districts and 22 local improvement districts in New York City across nine elections between 2002 and 2018, resulting in 198 unique observations across time. Empirical results reflect how the development of improvement districts can serve as signals for rising political participation in surrounding areas, marked by increasing rates of voter turnout across midterm and presidential-year election cycles. These findings are compelling, providing insight into how local organizations designed and sustained through issue ownership and community collaboration have the ability to raise political participation through electoral activity.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-41
Author(s):  
Roberto Garcia-Castro ◽  
◽  
Miguel A. Ariño ◽  
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Sona N. Golder ◽  
Ignacio Lago ◽  
André Blais ◽  
Elisabeth Gidengil ◽  
Thomas Gschwend

This chapter argues that individual voting behaviour and the strategies chosen by political parties across multiple electoral arenas should be considered jointly. Existing literature points to the importance of an election as a major driving force in voting behaviour, but it is argued that voters and parties may differ in their assessments of the importance of elections at different levels. The chapter discusses how the effect of the importance of an electoral arena, for both voter and party behaviour, will be conditioned by electoral institutions and characteristics of parties and the party system, in addition to individual voter characteristics contributing to it.


Author(s):  
Johannes Lindvall ◽  
David Rueda

This chapter examines the long-run relationship between public opinion, party politics, and the welfare state. It argues that when large parties receive a clear signal concerning the median voter’s position on the welfare state, vote-seeking motivations dominate and the large parties in the party system converge on the position of the median voter. When the position of the median voter is more difficult to discern, however, policy-seeking motivations dominate, and party positions diverge. This argument implies that the effects of government partisanship on welfare state policy are more ambiguous than generally understood. The countries covered in the chapter are Denmark, France, Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom (going back to the 1960s). The number of observations is (necessarily) limited, but the diverse cases illustrate a common electoral dynamic centered around the position of the median voter.


Author(s):  
Andrea M. Leiter ◽  
Engelbert Theurl

AbstractIn this paper we examine determinants of prepaid modes of health care financing in a worldwide cross-country perspective. We use three different indicators to capture the role of prepaid modes in health care financing: (i) the share of total prepaid financing as percent of total current health expenditures, (ii) the share of voluntary prepaid financing as percent of total prepaid financing, and (iii) the share of compulsory health insurance as percent of total compulsory prepaid financing. In the econometric analysis, we refer to a panel data set comprising 154 countries and covering the time period 2000–2015. We apply a static as well as a dynamic panel data model. We find that the current structure of prepaid financing is significantly determined by its different forms in the past. The significant influence of GDP per capita, governmental revenues, the agricultural value added, development assistance for health, degree of urbanization and regulatory quality varies depending on the financing structure we look at. The share of the elderly and the education level are only of minor importance for explaining the variation in a country’s share of prepaid health care financing. The importance of the mentioned variables as determinants for prepaid health care financing also varies depending on the countries’ socio-economic development. From our analysis we conclude that more detailed information on indicators which reflect the distribution of individual characteristics (such as income, family size and structure and health risks) within a country’s population would be needed to gain deeper insight into the decisive determinants for prepaid health care financing.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Schiller ◽  
Christine Lang ◽  
Karen Schönwälder ◽  
Michalis Moutselos

AbstractIn both Germany and France, perceptions of immigration, diversity and their societal consequences have undergone important transformations in the past two decades. However, existing research has only partially captured such processes. The “grand narratives” of national approaches, while still influential, no longer explain contemporary realities. Further, analyses of national politics and discourses may not sufficiently reflect the realities across localities and society more broadly. While emerging in different national contexts, little is known about how diversity is actually perceived by political stakeholders at the urban level. Given the key role of immigration and diversity in current conflicts over Europe’s future, it is imperative to assess present-day conceptualisations of migration-related diversity among important societal actors.This article investigates perceptions and evaluations of socio-cultural heterogeneity by important societal actors in large cities. We contribute to existing literature by capturing an unusually broad set of actors from state and civil society. We also present data drawn from an unusually large number of cities. How influential is the perception of current society as heterogeneous, and what forms of heterogeneity are salient? And is socio-cultural and migration-related heterogeneity evaluated as threatening or rather as beneficial? Based on an original data set, this study explores the shared and contested ideas, the cognitive roadmaps of state and non-state actors involved in local politics.We argue that, in both German and French cities, socio-cultural heterogeneity is nowadays widely recognized as marking cities and often positively connoted. At the same time, perceptions of the main features of diversity and of the benefits and challenges attached to it vary. We find commonalities between French and German local actors, but also clear differences. In concluding, we suggest how and why national contexts importantly shape evaluations of diversity.


2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Kselman ◽  
Eleanor Neff Powell ◽  
Joshua A. Tucker

This paper develops a novel argument as to the conditions under which new political parties will form in democratic states. Our approach hinges on the manner in which politicians evaluate the policy implications of new party entry alongside considerations of incumbency for its own sake. We demonstrate that if candidates care sufficiently about policy outcomes, then the likelihood of party entry shouldincreasewith the effective number of status quo parties in the party system. This relationship weakens, and eventually disappears, as politicians’ emphasis on “office-seeking” motivations increases relative to their interest in public policy. We test these predictions with both aggregate electoral data in contemporary Europe and a data set on legislative volatility in Turkey, uncovering support for the argument that party system fragmentation should positively affect the likelihood of entry when policy-seeking motivations are relevant, but not otherwise.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lajos Horváth ◽  
Zhenya Liu ◽  
Gregory Rice ◽  
Yuqian Zhao

Abstract The problem of detecting change points in the mean of high dimensional panel data with potentially strong cross–sectional dependence is considered. Under the assumption that the cross–sectional dependence is captured by an unknown number of common factors, a new CUSUM type statistic is proposed. We derive its asymptotic properties under three scenarios depending on to what extent the common factors are asymptotically dominant. With panel data consisting of N cross sectional time series of length T, the asymptotic results hold under the mild assumption that min {N, T} → ∞, with an otherwise arbitrary relationship between N and T, allowing the results to apply to most panel data examples. Bootstrap procedures are proposed to approximate the sampling distribution of the test statistics. A Monte Carlo simulation study showed that our test outperforms several other existing tests in finite samples in a number of cases, particularly when N is much larger than T. The practical application of the proposed results are demonstrated with real data applications to detecting and estimating change points in the high dimensional FRED-MD macroeconomic data set.


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