Heike Klüver

Heike Klüver
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | HU Berlin · Department of Social Sciences

PhD

About

65
Publications
37,324
Reads
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3,200
Citations
Additional affiliations
October 2016 - present
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Position
  • Professor of Comparative Political Behavior
April 2015 - September 2016
Hamburg University
Position
  • Professor of Comparative Politics
April 2013 - March 2015
University of Bamberg
Position
  • Professor of Empirical Political Science

Publications

Publications (65)
Article
Does supporting a minority cabinet harm a party’s electoral prospects? While minority governments have become more common in recent years, the electoral implications for parties supporting such cabinets remain unclear. Previous research suggests that support parties enjoy a favorable position, exerting policy influence while avoiding electoral loss...
Article
Does policy-making in coalition governments affect cabinet parties’ electoral performance? Previous research shows that about two thirds of all propositions promised in coalition agreements are actually enacted. But does non-compliance with pledges made in the agreement affect subsequent electoral support? Drawing on the literature on performance v...
Chapter
Why do political parties negotiate coalition agreements? Many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy coalition contracts outlining the agenda for the time in office. Negotiating such an agreement not only takes time and resources, but compromises have to be made which may result in cabinet conflicts and electoral costs. We argue that coalition agreem...
Chapter
Why do political parties negotiate coalition agreements? Many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy coalition contracts outlining the agenda for the time in office. Negotiating such an agreement not only takes time and resources, but compromises have to be made which may result in cabinet conflicts and electoral costs. We argue that coalition agreem...
Chapter
Why do political parties negotiate coalition agreements? Many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy coalition contracts outlining the agenda for the time in office. Negotiating such an agreement not only takes time and resources, but compromises have to be made which may result in cabinet conflicts and electoral costs. We argue that coalition agreem...
Chapter
Why do political parties negotiate coalition agreements? Many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy coalition contracts outlining the agenda for the time in office. Negotiating such an agreement not only takes time and resources, but compromises have to be made which may result in cabinet conflicts and electoral costs. We argue that coalition agreem...
Chapter
Why do political parties negotiate coalition agreements? Many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy coalition contracts outlining the agenda for the time in office. Negotiating such an agreement not only takes time and resources, but compromises have to be made which may result in cabinet conflicts and electoral costs. We argue that coalition agreem...
Chapter
Why do political parties negotiate coalition agreements? Many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy coalition contracts outlining the agenda for the time in office. Negotiating such an agreement not only takes time and resources, but compromises have to be made which may result in cabinet conflicts and electoral costs. We argue that coalition agreem...
Chapter
Why do political parties negotiate coalition agreements? Many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy coalition contracts outlining the agenda for the time in office. Negotiating such an agreement not only takes time and resources, but compromises have to be made which may result in cabinet conflicts and electoral costs. We argue that coalition agreem...
Book
Why do political parties negotiate coalition agreements? Many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy coalition contracts outlining the agenda for the time in office. Negotiating such an agreement not only takes time and resources, but compromises have to be made which may result in cabinet conflicts and electoral costs. We argue that coalition agreem...
Chapter
Why do political parties negotiate coalition agreements? Many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy coalition contracts outlining the agenda for the time in office. Negotiating such an agreement not only takes time and resources, but compromises have to be made which may result in cabinet conflicts and electoral costs. We argue that coalition agreem...
Chapter
Why do political parties negotiate coalition agreements? Many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy coalition contracts outlining the agenda for the time in office. Negotiating such an agreement not only takes time and resources, but compromises have to be made which may result in cabinet conflicts and electoral costs. We argue that coalition agreem...
Chapter
Why do political parties negotiate coalition agreements? Many coalition cabinets negotiate lengthy coalition contracts outlining the agenda for the time in office. Negotiating such an agreement not only takes time and resources, but compromises have to be made which may result in cabinet conflicts and electoral costs. We argue that coalition agreem...
Article
Full-text available
While coalition agreements are significant in structuring government behaviour, their comprehensiveness varies considerably across cabinets. We argue that the average correspondence between parties' priorities and portfolio allocation is important in explaining the comprehensiveness of coalition agreements because coalition parties that have obtain...
Article
Few existing datasets on parties and interest groups include data from both sides and a wide variety of interest groups and parties. We contribute to filling this gap by making several interconnected new datasets publicly available. The Party-Interest Group Relationships in Contemporary Democracies (PAIRDEM) datasets include cross-national data fro...
Article
Full-text available
Prior literature points to the importance of party power and ideology for interest group-party contacts in the legislative arena. But interest groups do not often have ideologies – they are typically active in a small number of policy domains and there may be different parties that share more similar preferences across different policy areas. There...
Article
Full-text available
While a multitude of studies have investigated the link between opinion and policy, we have little knowledge of how and when organized interests affect this linkage. We argue that the alignment of organized interests affects opinion‐policy congruence by influencing the weight decision‐makers attach to citizen preferences. Moreover, we propose that...
Article
Why do coalition parties settle some policy issues in great detail, whereas other issues are hardly mentioned in coalition agreements? Coalition agreements are important policy platforms that determine policy making during the legislative term. However, we know remarkably little about their content. We shed light on why issue attention in coalition...
Article
Right-wing populist and far right parties are on the rise across Europe. While established parties suffer dramatic electoral losses, right-wing parties are celebrating one electoral victory after another. To address their radical right challengers, many established parties have adopted a so-called “accommodative strategy” (Meguid 2005, 2008) by tak...
Article
Full-text available
Interest groups are important intermediary organizations that function as a transmission belt between societal interests and political decision-makers. However, while some interest groups survive over decades, others only last a few years. This article argues that the survival of interest groups depends on their ability to mobilize resources which...
Article
Full-text available
Does joining a governing coalition as a junior partner influence a party's subsequent electoral success? We argue that joining a multiparty cabinet as a junior partner considerably hurts a party's future electoral prospects as junior partners cannot enact much of what they promised before the election and since they cannot sufficiently differentiat...
Article
Does joining a governing coalition as a junior partner influence a party’s subsequent electoral success? We argue that joining a multiparty cabinet as a junior partner considerably hurts a party’s future electoral prospects as junior partners cannot enact much of what they promised before the election and since they cannot sufficiently differentiat...
Article
How can we explain the significant vote losses of mainstream parties across Europe in recent years? In this article, we argue that mainstream party convergence is an important determinant of the recent political and electoral volatility in European party systems. More specifically, we hypothesize that as mainstream parties converge on the left-righ...
Article
Why do coalition parties settle some policy issues in great detail while other issues are hardly mentioned in coalition agreements? Coalition agreements are important policy platforms that determine policy-making during the legislative term. However, we know remarkably little about their content. We shed light on why issue attention in coalition ag...
Article
Voters are increasingly concerned that special interests control the policy process. Yet, the literature on representation is more optimistic: elected officials face strong incentives to listen to voters—not just lobby groups—and this makes for more responsive policies. Building on recent work, we argue a more nuanced point: different types of grou...
Article
What is the role of interest groups in the transmission of issues between the public and government policy? While government responsiveness to voters has received widespread scholarly attention, little is known about the role of interest groups in the transmission of public opinion to government. We argue that interest groups importantly influence...
Article
Why does the number of interest groups vary across economic sectors? Interest groups are an important channel through which companies can transmit their policy preferences to decision-makers. However, empirical research shows that the number of interest groups varies considerably across sectors. We argue that the size and the wealth of the potentia...
Article
Full-text available
This article examines to what extent different formal conceptualizations of ideological conflict can help to explain the capacity for and speed of policy change in the European Union. We compare the core and the winset, two competing concepts based on the spatial theory of voting. The empirical analysis shows that the latter concept bears a strong...
Article
Do political parties respond to interest group mobilization? While party responsiveness to voters has received widespread attention, little is known about how interest groups affect parties’ policy agendas. I argue that political parties respond to interest groups as lobbyists offer valuable information, campaign contributions and personal rewards,...
Article
Full-text available
Objective: While selective issue emphasis is a widely recognized strategy of party competition, we have little knowledge about how coalition parties interact with each other when deciding which policy issues to emphasize. Therefore we ask, who leads and who follows the issue agenda in coalition governments? Methods: We create an issue attention da...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Coalition agreements are important policy platforms that crucially determine policy‐making and coalition governance during the legislative term. However, we know remarkably little about their content. Importantly, while coalition partners settle some policy issues in great detail thus prescribing a detailed policy agenda, other issues are hardly me...
Article
When are minority cabinets effective? We study the extent to which minority cabinets demonstrate legislative reliability, i.e. introduce to parliament the bills they have announced in their legislative agendas. We test hypotheses drawn from two theories of minority government effectiveness: the positional agenda power theory which emphasizes the ce...
Article
Does governing in coalitions affect how coalition parties’ policy positions are perceived by voters? In this article, we seek to understand the relationship between parties’ participation in coalition governments and their perception by voters. Policy positions are an important instrument through which parties compete for the support of voters. How...
Article
Full-text available
How does governing in coalitions affect coalition parties’ responsiveness to voters? In this article, we seek to understand the relationship between political parties’ participation in multiparty governments and their responsiveness to voters. We argue that the extent to which coalition parties respond to policy priorities of voters is influenced b...
Article
Full-text available
Coalition parties have to reconcile two competing logics: They need to demonstrate unity to govern together, but also have to emphasize their own profile to succeed in elections. We argue that the electoral cycle explains whether unity or differentiation prevails. While differentiation dominates at the beginning and the end of the legislative term...
Article
Full-text available
Why do political parties prioritize some policy issues over others? While the issue ownership theory suggests that parties emphasize policy issues on which they have an advantage to increase the salience of these issues among voters, the riding the wave theory instead argues that parties respond to voters by highlighting policy issues that are sali...
Article
Full-text available
Since political scientists were introduced to the concept of ‘the scope and bias of the pressure system’ by Schattschneider more than half a century ago, we have grappled with the lack of a standard against which to assess bias. Still, scholars have continued to address Schattschneider's provocative claim. This means that they must have in their mi...
Article
Citizens delegate the representation of their political preferences to Members of Parliament (MPs) who are supposed to represent their interests in the legislature. However, MPs are exposed to a variety of interest groups seeking to influence their voting behavior. We argue that interest groups influence how MPs cast their vote in Parliament, but t...
Article
How does voter polarization affect party responsiveness? Previous research has shown that political parties emphasize political issues that are important to their voters. However, we posit that political parties are not equally responsive to citizen demands across all issue areas. We hypothesize that party responsiveness varies considerably with th...
Article
Full-text available
We outline a conceptual framework that identifies and characterizes the contextual nature of interest group politics in the European Union to better understand variation in interest group mobilization, lobbying strategies and interest group influence. We focus on two sets of contextual factors that affect EU interest group lobbying. First, we argue...
Article
Do interest groups adjust their activity in response to public opinion? While previous studies have primarily focused on the link between voters, political parties and governments, interest groups have largely been ignored. This article therefore examines how public opinion affects interest group activity. It is argued that interest group activity...
Article
Framing plays an important role in public policy. Interest groups strategically highlight some aspects of a policy proposal while ignoring others in order to gain an advantage in the policy debate. However, we know remarkably little about how interest groups choose their frames. This paper therefore studies the determinants of frame choice during t...
Article
Full-text available
Do parties listen to their voters? We address this important question by moving beyond position congruence to explore whether parties respond to the issue priorities of voters. We argue that political parties respond to voters in their election manifestos, but that their responsiveness varies across different party types, namely that large parties...
Article
Framing plays an important role in lobbying as interest groups strategically highlight some aspects of policy proposals while ignoring others to shape policy debates in their favor. However, due to methodological difficulties we have remarkably little systematic data about the framing strategies of interest groups. This article therefore proposes a...
Article
Full-text available
How do political parties arrive at their policy positions? While the literature on political parties has devoted considerable attention to studying the impact of voter preferences on position choice, little is known about the effect of internal party politics on preference formation. We conceptualize position formation in federalist countries as a...
Article
Framing plays an important role in public policy. Interest groups strategically highlight some aspects of a policy proposal while downplaying others in order to steer the policy debate in a favorable direction. Despite the importance of framing, we still know relatively little about the framing strategies of interest groups due to methodological di...
Article
Full-text available
What explains when Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) defect from their EP party group? While previous research has focused on the policy distance between an MEP’s national party and her party group, it has been overlooked that not all issues are equally important to national parties. As parties prioritize certain issues over others, we argu...
Article
When do coalitions do what they promise? Previous research has focused on the extent to which parties implement electoral pledges. In this article, we examine how coalition cabinets fulfil post-electoral legislative agendas. Many coalitions announce programmes identifying bills that they plan to introduce to parliament in the months ahead. Even tho...
Article
Full-text available
How does ideological congruency affect the speed of legislative decision-making in the European Union? Despite the crucial importance of actor preferences, the effect of partisan alignments and ideological composition of the European institutions has largely been neglected. However, we argue that the ideological congruence between legislative bodie...
Article
Full-text available
While Europarties have received increasing attention in recent years, little is known about how they arrive at common policy positions, given their strong internal ideological heterogeneity. In order to explain position formation within Europarties, this article argues that national parties compete with each other in an attempt to upload their own...
Article
Full-text available
Does professionalization vary across interest group type? Even though an empirical assessment of interest group professionalization is crucial to understand their potential for enhancing the democratic legitimacy of the European Union, little is known about the internal configuration of interest groups. Although some argue that professionalization...
Article
Why does lobbying success in the European Union (EU) vary across interest groups? Even though this question is central to the study of EU policy-making, only few have dealt with it. The small number of existing studies is moreover characterized by a multitude of hypotheses and contradictory findings. This article aims to overcome these shortcomings...
Book
Why can some interest groups influence policy-making while others cannot? Even though this question is central to the study of politics, we know little about the factors explaining interest group influence. Understanding lobbying success should be of particular concern to scholars of European politics since the European Union constitutes a promisin...
Article
Does lobbying success in the European Union vary systematically across interest group type? Interest groups lobby the European institutions in order to achieve policy decisions that are in line with their own preferences. While some argue that different types of interest groups are equally able to shape European policy-making, others contend that l...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Why do governments respond to focusing events? While some governments have drastically changed their energy policy in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, other governments have hardly implemented any changes in their nuclear policy. In this article, we will address this puzzle by explaining government responsiveness to focusing events. We argu...
Article
Why are some interest groups able to successfully feed their preferences into the policy-making process in the European Union whereas others fail in their lobbying attempts? This study argues that lobbying success can largely be explained by the information that interest groups supply to the European Commission, the Council and the European Parliam...
Article
Information supply is an important instrument through which interest groups can exert influence on political decisions. However, information supply to decision-makers varies extensively across interest groups despite the common objective to influence policy-making. Drawing on resource mobilisation and organisational theory, a new theoretical framew...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Coalition parties have to reconcile two competing logics: They need to demonstrate unity to govern together, but also have to emphasize their own profile to succeed in elections. We argue that the electoral cycle explains whether unity or differentiation prevails. While differentiation dominates at the beginning and the end of the legislative term...
Article
Why are some interest groups able to lobby political decisions successfully whereas others are not? This article suggests that the issue context is an important source of variation because it can facilitate or hamper the ability of interest groups to lobby decision-makers successfully. In order to test the effect of issue characteristics, this arti...
Article
The increasing transfer of competencies to the European level together with the growing heterogeneity of European interest federations puts national interest groups under extensive pressure. In order to guarantee the representation of their interests at the European level, they have to lobby the European institutions directly. However, not all nati...
Article
The analysis of interest group influence is crucial in order to explain policy outcomes and to assess the democratic legitimacy of the European Union. However, owing to methodological difficulties in operationalizing influence, only few have studied it. This article therefore proposes a new approach to the measurement of influence, drawing on quant...

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