Heiko Giebler

• Dr.
• Researcher at WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Access to information is a hallmark of democracy, and democracy demands an informed citizenry. Knowledge of party positions is necessary for voters so that electoral choices reflect preferences, allowing voters to hold elected officials accountable for policy performance. Whereas most vote choice models assume that parties perfectly transmit positi...

[The paper can be accessed here: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Zf3wybRSgG6ZX2825FKp/full] For the personal vote to be cast in a meaningful way it is a minimal condition that voters recognise candidates. However, from earlier studies we know that there is huge variation in the number of candidates recognised. Little to nothing is known about ca...

[Free access to the paper: http://rdcu.be/mrDo ] Parties in government face a decline in EP elections after experiencing a surge in votes to win the national election. This occurs because voters are more inclined to give voice to their dissatisfaction with current government performance by voting for the opposition or exiting because less is at sta...

Since its formation, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has been subject to a lively debate. While it has been characterized as ‘Eurosceptical’ in public, the party is more and more accused of promoting conservative and right-wing positions in terms of societal policy and integration as well as showing anti-establishment attitudes. Based on theo...

Dieser Band hinterfragt aus verschiedenen Perspektiven die Beziehung zwischen Ökonomie und politischem Verhalten und Einstellungen vor dem Hintergrund der Wirtschaftskrise. Innovative Analysen einer Vielzahl von Datenquellen ergeben, dass der Satz „It’s the economy, stupid!“ mehrfach differenziert werden muss: den ökonomischen Wähler gibt es nicht....

Zusammenfassung Nach Europawahlen werden von Medien, Parteien und auch der Wissenschaft häufig Rückschlüsse auf die politische Stimmung in einem Mitgliedsland gezogen. Die Wahlen zum Europäischen Parlament stellen allerdings Nebenwahlen dar, die von den Bürger:innen häufig als „Denkzettel“ für die nationalen Regierungsparteien genutzt werden. Eine...

The success of right-wing populist parties (RPPs) is often attributed to their deployment of the rhetoric of fear that capitalizes on societal crisis and corresponding anxieties. However, empirical evidence on the relationship between anxiety and support for RPP (RPP support) remains inconclusive. We argue that right-wing authoritarian (RWA) and po...

Considering gender inequality in time as a resource for political participation and using Wave 5 of the European Social Survey data on 24 European countries, this study examines: (1) the relationship of both long working hours and unsociable work schedules to participation in national elections in Europe before or during 2010; (2) factors that may...

As a consequence of the European Economic Crisis, the European Union (EU) has implanted mechanisms to assist fellow member states facing economic difficulties. Despite an increasing academic interest in public preferences for such intra-EU solidarity measures, research has so far largely ignored individual characteristics that could possibly influe...

European democracies have experienced drastic changes in electoral competition. Voter support for insider parties that have traditionally governed has declined while support for radical and populist parties has increased. Simultaneously, citizens’ declining political trust has become a concern, as confidence in political institutions and actors is...

Previous studies aimed at explaining populist support emphasize the crucial role of populist attitudes and ideology among the general population. With respect to the role of discontent and grievances as drivers of populist support—often at the heart of theoretical work on populism—however, empirical results are rather mixed. We argue that the appar...

The spread and success of radical and populist parties has triggered a profound debate on the state of democracy. Not only are these parties described as the outcome of a democratic malaise in which democratic regimes had ceased to integrate, represent and engage all their citizens. At the same time, questions arose as to the consequences of these...

Political parties strive for maximizing their vote shares. One way to achieve this goal is to attract voters from competitors. A precondition for strategies aiming at attracting these voters is that parties perceive their voter potentials among their rivals' electorates correctly. Yet, hardly anything is known about such perceptions. To fill this g...

Was macht eine gute Entscheidung in der Demokratie aus? Diese explorative Studie betrachtet und vergleicht Einstellungen der Bürgerinnen und politischen Eliten zu dieser zentralen Frage der prozeduralen Legitimität der Demokratie in Deutschland. Im Mittelpunkt stehen drei Perspektiven, welche jeweils unterschiedliche Aspekte für eine gute Entscheid...

Are populist parties bad for representative democracy or are they filling a representative gap? While it has been broadly established that the emergence and success of populist parties is not merely a sign of protest, there is still a sparsity of empirical investigations into whether these parties represent hitherto under- or unrepresented social g...

Political parties respond strategically to the electoral success of radical right populist parties (RRPPs). While previous research has focused on programmatic responses on cultural conflict issues, we are expanding the research on policy position adaption to the economic left-right issue of welfare-state politics. Actual and potential supporters o...

Die Bundestagswahl war eine Wahl zwischen Polarisierung und Beharrung. Die Parteien der Großen Koalition mussten massive Stimmenverluste hinnehmen. Dennoch blieb die schwarz-rote Regierung unter Angela Merkel im Amt. Mit der AfD gelang erstmalig einer rechtspopulistischen Partei der Einzug in den Bundestag. Auf Basis von Daten, die im Rahmen der Ge...

Both, in Germany as well as the USA, right-wing populist voters are characterized by anti-elitist attitudes and glorification of the past. However, differences between such voters and the general public are more substantive in Germany and only in Germany right-wing populist voters are also characterized by a strong sense of societal crisis. Hence,...

Political conflict is often described in terms of “left” and “right” even though societal conflicts stem from various sub-dimensions such as economic and cultural issues. We argue that individuals map parties’ left-right positions based on party positions on such underlying dimensions, though their impact depends on their importance for parties and...

Locating political parties correctly regarding different policy issues is not just crucial for research on parties, party competition, and many similar fields but also for the electorate. For the latter, it has become more and more important as the relevance of voting advice applications (VAA) has increased and as their main usage is to compare cit...

The Bundestag election was a choice between polarisation and insistence. The parties in the grand coalition had to accept massive losses of votes. Nevertheless, the black-red government under Angela Merkel remained in power. The AfD was the first right-wing populist party to enter the Bundestag. Based on data collected within the framework of the G...

The Bundestag election was a choice between polarisation and insistence. The parties in the grand coalition had to accept massive losses of votes. Nevertheless, the black-red government under Angela Merkel remained in power. The AfD was the first right-wing populist party to enter the Bundestag. Based on data collected within the framework of the G...

Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit der Frage, welche individuellen Motive die Wahlentscheidung zugunsten der Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) bei der Europawahl 2014 begünstigten. Wir unterscheiden dabei zwischen Nebenwahlverhalten, Systemkritik an der Europäischen Union sowie allgemeine Sachfragenpräferenzen. Dabei argumentieren wir, dass der die be...

In this article, we demonstrate that the issue-yield concept is able to predict party strategies of governing and opposition parties at the 2017 German Federal Election. While the electorate of CDU/CSU and SPD favour valence issues, the Greens and the AfD can gain more by concentrating on socio-cultural positional issues. Relying on a unique survey...

Measures of democracy are in high demand. Scientific and public audiences use them to describe political realities and to substantiate causal claims about those realities. This introduction to the thematic issue reviews the history of democracy measurement since the 1950s. It identifies four development phases of the field, which are characterized...

Geographic Coverage: Germany (DE) Universe: The frame population is restricted to candidates of parties that were members of the German Bundestag prior to the 2017 general election: SPD, CDU, CSU, Bündnis90/Die Grünen and Die Linke. These were complemented by candidates of the, according to pre-election surveys, biggest non-parliamentary parties FD...

How do voters make electoral choices? An important strand in the literature has examined the relationship between information and electoral choices—a strand that we investigate and extend in this special issue. Specifically, we present different perspectives on how electoral competition, the core factor structuring electoral choices, is related to...

Looking at differences in electoral outcome in first- and second-order elections, there is only scant evidence that the second-order approach holds when translated to and tested on the micro level. We present a more nuanced framework that distinguishes between direct and indirect contextual effects as implicit elements of the original second-order...

Obwohl die Begriffe „links“ und „rechts“ in der politischen Kommunikation allgegenwärtig sind, kann ihre Bedeutung je nach Kontext stark variieren. Unsere Ergebnisse zu den Bevölkerungswahrnehmungen der deutschen Parteien seit der Bun­destagswahl 2013 zeigen, dass sich vor allem die Wahrnehmung der AfD signifikant gewandelt hat: Die Partei wird i...

In political philosophy, economic theory and public discourse, there is a seemingly endless debate on what the essence of equality and freedom is and what relation between the two is essential to a good political order. Views range from the conviction that too much socio-economic equality jeopardises freedom to the position that a certain level of...

In den letzten Jahren stehen individuelle Wahlkampagnen immer mehr im Fokus der Forschung. Dieser Beitrag präsentiert ein Analyseraster zur Beschreibung der Qualitäten dieser Wahlkampagnen, genauer bezogen auf Dauer, Intensität, Instrumente und Inhalte. Im empirischen Teil werden auf dieser Grundlage individuelle Wahlkampagnen bei der Bundestagswah...

[AVAILABLE VIA THE CSES DATA CENTER] The CSES Harmonized Trend File covers all variables of all election studies that are covered by CSES modules 1 to 3. As opposed to just creating a merged dataset containing each variable for each wave, we cumulated, and partly integrated, all micro-and macro-level variables (except for the ID, weighting and admi...

In unserem Beitrag untersuchen wir, inwieweit die in den Medien vorhandenen Informationen über eine Partei die Effekte der Charakteristika der Individuen auf Einschätzungen von Parteipositionen beeinflussen. Konkret prüfen wir, inwiefern Zeitungs- und Fernsehberichte über europäische Themen Individuen unter Berücksichtigung ihrer Charakteristika he...

In unserem Beitrag untersuchen wir, inwieweit die in den Medien vorhandenen Informationen über eine Partei die Effekte der Charakteristika der Individuen auf Einschätzungen von Parteipositionen beeinflussen. Konkret prüfen wir, inwiefern Zeitungs- und Fernsehberichte über europäische Themen Individuen unter Berücksichtigung ihrer Charakteristika he...

Die Deutsche Kandidatenstudie zur Europawahl 2014 wurde als Teilprojekt im Rahmen der German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) und in Kooperation mit dem Comparative Candidates Survey, einem international vergleichenden Forschungsprojekt zu Kandidatinnen und Kandidaten in Wahlkämpfen sowie der European Election Study 2014 durchgeführt. Die Daten w...

The following pages document the preparation of the comparative dataset of the European Election Candidate Study 2014 (EECS 2014), version 1.0.0. For each country, the study was administered by country teams. Hence, this documentation provides a description of each study. Additionally to infor-mation on the coding of the variables this documentatio...

Viele Parteien- und Demokratieforscherinnen beobachten seit Jahrzehnten besorgt den Niedergang politischer Parteien, gerade weil diese ein unverzichtbares Element repräsentativer Demokratie darstellen. Dabei wird auf diverse Indikatoren verwiesen, welche diesen Trend belegen: ein Rückgang der Stimmanteile von etablierten Parteien, ein Erstarken von...

Mit der AfD trat bei der vergangenen Bundestagswahl, vor allem aber bei der Europawahl 2014 und den darauff olgenden Landtagswahlen ein neuer politischer Akteur eindrucksvoll auf den Plan. Dieser Beitrag behandelt die Frage, inwiefern es sich lediglich um ein kurzzeitiges (Protest-)Phänomen handelt oder ob Hinweise auf eine langfristige und damit a...

[VOLLTEXTZUGRIFF: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/162876] Modelle ökonomischen Wählens rekurrieren auf zwei Elemente: die Evaluation ökonomischer Verhältnisse und die Zuschreibung von Verantwortlichkeit. So wird eine demokratietheoretisch wichtige Kontrollfunktion ermöglicht; bei schlechter Lage und perzipierter Regierungsverantwortung wird eine Stimme...

[PAPER IS AVAILABLE IN AN OPEN ACCESS VERSION HERE: https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/157386 .] In contrast to national elections, both parties and voters are assumed to think that ‘less is at stake’ in European elections: Campaigns are less intense, turnout is lower, and citizens are more inclined to ‘vote with their hearts’. The latter should...

Die Deutsche Kandidatenstudie zur Bundestagswahl 2013 wurde als Teilprojekt im Rahmen der German Longitudinal Election Study 2013 (GLES) und in Kooperation mit dem Comparative Candidates Survey (CCS), einem international vergleichenden Forschungsprojekt zu Kandidatinnen und Kandidaten in Wahlkämpfen durchgeführt.

Den Kern der Deutschen Nationalen Wahlstudie 2013 bildet eine umfangreiche Face-to-Face- Befragung einer Zufallsstichprobe der Wählerschaft, die in eine Vorwahl- und eine Nachwahlwelle aufgesplittet wurde. Die Zufallsstichprobe bildet damit einen neuen Querschnitt von 3.911 Befragen als Basis für ein Langfristpanel. Jeweils rund die Hälfte der Befr...

Den Kern der Deutschen Nationalen Wahlstudie 2013 bildet eine umfangreiche Face-to-Face- Befragung einer Zufallsstichprobe der Wählerschaft, die in eine Vorwahl- und eine Nachwahlwelle aufgesplittet wurde. Die Zufallsstichprobe bildet damit einen neuen Querschnitt von 3.911 Befragten als Basis für ein Langfristpanel. Jeweils rund die Hälfte der Bef...

During the last decades, the context and supply-side of voting has undergone tremendous changes. One of the observed changes is “personalization of politics.” Individual candidates, their (perceived) individual characteristics, and their campaigns are assumed to have a growing impact on party choice whereas the relevance of parties is diminishing....

Das Verschwinden der Volksparteien gilt als eine zentrale Herausforderung moderner Demokratien. Durch die Einbeziehung elektoraler und programmatischer Kriterien lässt sich jedoch empirisch zeigen, dass die Zahl der echten Volksparteien deutlich überschätzt wird. Es kommt vielmehr zu einer Ausdifferenzierung des Parteiensystems zuungunsten von Groß...

Personalization of politics is a major topic in discussions about elections and electoral behavior. Does the personalization of politics imply an individualization of campaigning as well? Up to now, this question has not been sufficiently dealt with. On basis of the 2009 European Election Candidate Study carried out in all 27 member countries of th...

One of the most important variables in electoral research is competitiveness. It is assumed to be a necessary precondition for a healthy democracy. Electoral competitiveness is linked to various aspects of electoral democracy: it connects to the nature and dynamics of campaigns, media coverage, party systems and strategies, voter efficacy, politica...

Democracy measurement is an ever growing and increasingly important research area. Nevertheless, lively discussions concerning the qualities of different measurement approaches are seldom combined with an adequate perspective on the underlying methodological framework. This article argues that a substantial theoretical perspective is only a suffici...

Ziel dieses Artikels ist die Präsentation eines neuen Demokratieindex – des Demokratiebarometers. Das Demokratiebarometer versucht, die konzeptionellen und methodologischen Schwächen bisheriger Demokratiemaße zu überwinden, um so die Qualitätsunterschiede von etablierten Demokratien messen und analysieren zu können. Der Index basiert auf einem ausd...

This eBook contains some of the first fruits of a large collaborative project funded by the EU’s DG Research under their FP7 Programme: an “infrastructure design study” whose ultimate goal is “Providing an Infrastructure for Research on Electoral Democracy in the European Union” – a title that gives rise to the unlovely acronym PIREDEU, used repeat...

Die Deutsche Kandidatenstudie zur Bundestagswahl 2009 wurde als Teilprojekt im Rahmen der German Longitudinal Election Study 2009 (GLES) und in Kooperation mit dem Comparative Candidates Survey, einem international vergleichenden Forschungsprojekt zu Kandidatinnen und Kandidaten in Wahlkämpfen durchgeführt. Die Datenerhebung wurde am Mannheimer Zen...

Election campaigns are not only party campaigns, but depend to a significant degree on the efforts and activities of individual candidates. While some country-specific analyses of candidate campaigning have been done, large-N comparative studies are missing. The 2009 European Election Candidate Study, conducted in all 27 EU countries, does allow fo...

Im Verlauf von Wahlkämpfen spielen nicht nur Parteien und die Massenmedien eine entscheidende Rolle für Erfolg und Misserfolg, sondern auch individuelle Kandidatinnen und deren persönliche Kampagnenaktivitäten. Bislang haben in erster Linie Spitzen- oder Präsidentschaftskandidatinnen im Fokus wissenschaftlicher Analysen gestanden (vgl. Hacker 1995;...

Political Representation at the European level is organized around two principles: the territorial one and the partisan. Earlier studies have shown that the MEPs decide very much along partisan lines as long as bread-and-butter issues are concerned. When it comes to European issues, the national dimension plays an important role. The paper elaborat...

There is an ongoing debate regarding the implementation of referenda in representative democracies which is determined by a dissent between citizens advocating in favor of such practices and rather skeptical political elites. This is especially the case in terms of referenda related to EUtreaties, even though there are major differences between mem...

"Während viele Studien auf der Individualebene eine fragmentierte, mehrdimensionale und nicht-kumulative Struktur politischer Partizipation aufzeigen, kommt dieser Vergleich von 22 Nationen Europas auf der Makroebene zum Ergebnis, dass verschiedene Formen politischer und sozialer Beteiligung sowohl kumulativ als auch eindimensional sind. So können...