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Introduction
Marc Debus is a Professor of Comparative Government at the School of Social Sciences at the University of Mannheim, Germany. Marc's research interests include political institutions and their effects on the political process, party competition and coalition politics, and political decision-making in multi-level systems.
Additional affiliations
October 2012 - present
March 2012 - September 2012
February 2008 - February 2012
Publications
Publications (186)
Der vorliegende Band ist dem Verhältnis von Informationen, Wahlen und Demokratie gewidmet. Deutschland, aber auch andere Länder in den Blick nehmend, widmen sich die Autor:innen vor allem den Bürger:innen, ihren Einstellungen, Interessen und Wahlentscheidungen. Auch die Rolle von Kontexten wird beleuchtet, insbesondere von Informationskontexten: Wi...
Parties are key actors in representative democracies. They link the interests of citizens with the institutions of the respective political system, so that representatives of the parties are voted into executive offices and try their best to implement the policy positions that they presented to the voters during the election campaign. The more of t...
State elections in Germany’s multi-level polity have important implications for politics at both the regional and the federal level: state governments’ composition makes a difference for both policy outputs and the federal government’s political leeway. We provide novel insights into long-term trends in state elections, including aspects of voting...
Migration has become an important and polarising issue on the political agenda, in particular since the migration movements to Europe in 2015. What attitudes migrants bring to the host societies is relevant for the stability of modern democracies in general and for political representation in particular. Several studies investigate differences in a...
This open access book focuses on the importance that EU politicization has gained in European democracies and the consequences for voting behaviour in six countries of the EU: Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain. Most of the studies which research the way the EU is being legitimised focus on the European Parliament elections. In t...
The decision-making processes employed by German politicians and voters in elections to the German Bundestag matter decisively for policy-making at the European level. When casting their vote, German voters choose their representatives and are in a position to use federal elections to keep European Union (EU) policy accountable and better defend th...
Die Biographien der Ministerinnen und Minister aus den Kabinetten Merkel III und IV zeigen zunächst den Weg ins Ministeramt auf. Anschließend werden die politischen Leistungen der Ministerinnen und Minister in ihrem jeweiligen Ressort analysiert und bewertet. Sollten die Porträtierten bereits aus dem Amt geschieden sein, wird auch die nachministeri...
Dieser Beitrag gibt einen Überblick darüber, wie sich die Programmprofile der großen (west-)deutschen Parteien in umwelt- und naturschutzpolitischen Fragen im Laufe der Zeit entwickelt haben. Zudem wird dargelegt, wie sich angesichts des steigenden umwelt- und naturschutzpolitischen Problembewusstseins in der Bevölkerung die Strukturen der Regierun...
Most parliamentary democracies have seen a rise of populist radical parties during the past decades. Many countries have also experienced severely delayed government formation processes, with caretaker governments in office for extended periods of time. Are these delays related to the rise of radical parties? We argue that the rise of populist radi...
What positions do ethnic parties adopt on issues related to migration and immigration? We argue that, first, the specific characteristics of the party system-that is, if there are further ethnic parties that compete for votes, in particular among the same ethnic group-matter for the policy profile of ethnic parties on immigration policy. Secondly,...
The GLES Open Science Challenge 2021 was a pilot project aimed at demonstrating that registered reports are an appropriate and beneficial publication format in quantitative political science that helps to increase transparency and replicability in the research process and thus yields substantial and relevant contributions to our discipline. The pro...
The GLES Open Science Challenge 2021 was a pioneering initiative in quantitative political science. Aimed at increasing the adoption of replicable and transparent research practices, it led to this special issue. The project combined the rigor of registered reports—a new publication format in which studies are evaluated prior to data collection/acc...
Which party controls which cabinet posts is an important determinant of how multi-party governments work. Existing research shows that parties' attention to policy domains in election manifestos is a key predictor of portfolio allocation. However, election manifestos are broad documents and typically published months before an election. This resear...
We make use of party press releases and Wikipedia page view data to study issue dynamics and its determinants of a relatively young right-wing populist party. By applying structural topic models, we analyse 2262 press releases of the 'Alternative for Germany' (AfD) from 2013 until 2019. The findings reveal, first, that European integration, EU econ...
Parliamentary debates are an important stage in the process of designing new policies and play an important role for discussing the policy reactions to exogenous events like the COVID-19 pandemic or long-term developments like climate change. We combine theories on vote-seeking strategies of political actors with theoretical accounts that highlight...
Zusammenfassung
Diese Research Note berichtet zentrale Ergebnisse des Open Expert Surveys 2021 (OES21). In diesem Expert:innen-Survey, der vor der Bundestagswahl 2021 durchgeführt wurde, haben mehr als 300 Politikwissenschaftler:innen die wichtigsten Parteien entlang zentraler politischer Sachfragen verortet und deren Wichtigkeit für die jeweilige...
In repräsentativ organisierten modernen Demokratien stellen politische Parteien das zentrale Bindeglied zwischen den Bürgerinnen und Bürgern und den politischen Institutionen dar. Im Vorfeld von Wahlen machen Parteien den Wahlberechtigten Politikangebote, um sie auf diese Weise zur Stimmabgabe für sich und ihre Kandidatinnen und Kandidaten zu überz...
Der Beitrag zeichnet die Entwicklung des Parteienwettbewerbs in Baden-Württemberg zwischen 2016 und 2021 nach und verfolgt dabei die Fragen, ob sich bestimmte Muster hinter den programmatischen Verschiebungen der Par-teipositionen verbergen und welche Koalitionsoptionen nach der Landtagswahl 2021 wahrscheinlich sind. Auf der Grundlage von Theorien...
Zusammenfassung
Das komplexer gewordene bundesdeutsche Parteiensystem und die Angleichung in der Stärke der Parteien bei Wahlen führt zu einem ebenfalls komplexeren Koalitions- und Regierungsbildungsprozess auf Bundes- wie Landesebene. Diese Kurzanalyse präsentiert die programmatischen Profile der im Bundestag vertretenen Parteien auf der Grundlage...
Eine Fülle von Studien hat sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten mit der zurückgehenden Erklärungskraft der Zugehörigkeit von Bürgern zu bestimmten sozialen Gruppen für das individuelle Wahlverhalten in westeuropäischen Demokratien beschäftigt. Während die empirische Evidenz dieser Studien weitgehend gemischt ausfällt, bleibt festzuhalten, dass der wirts...
This chapter examines the empirical patterns of the politics of legislative debates in thirty-three liberal democracies. There are three take-home messages in this chapter. First, twenty out of the thirty-three legislatures analyzed experience some sort of gender imbalance. Even controlling for potential confounders such as seniority, position in t...
The contribution of this chapter to our volume is fourfold. First, we look at why we should study legislative debates and how scholars may benefit from representation, legislative politics, party politics, and electoral studies by incorporating debates in their analysis. In so doing, we unpack their functions in liberal democracies. Second, the cha...
Legislative debates make democracy and representation work. Political actors engage in legislative debates to make their voice heard to voters. Parties use debates to shore up their brand.
This book makes the most comprehensive study of legislative debates thus far, looking at the politics of legislative debates in 33 liberal democracies in Europe...
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments to impose major restrictions on individual freedom in order to stop the spread of the virus. With the successful development of a vaccine, these restrictions are likely to become obsolete-on the condition that people get vaccinated. However, parts of the population have reservations against vaccination....
This chapter aims at presenting the characteristics of cabinets in Germany, in particular for the cabinets formed since the beginning of the twenty-first century. The chapter covers two decades of coalition dynamics and an era that has led to significant changes in German politics in general and the German party system in particular. The electoral...
Parties should develop a consistent issue profile during an electoral campaign. Yet, manifestos, which form the baseline for a party's programmatic goals in the upcoming legislative period, are usually published months before Election Day. We argue that parties must emphasize policy issues that are of key relevance to their likely voters in the las...
Legislative debates are a thriving field in comparative politics. They make representation work by offering legislators the opportunity to take the floor and represent their constituents. In this paper, we review the key theoretical concepts and empirical findings in a maturing field. We begin by addressing what legislative debates are and why we s...
Parliamentary debates are an important instrument for setting the political agenda. We hypothesize that parliamentarians belonging to a Green party deliver more speeches on issues related not only to the environment, but also to agriculture, energy and transport as well as to citizen and minority rights. We conceptualize this mix of policy issues a...
Why has the right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria supported a total glyphosate ban proposed by the Social Democratic Party? We examine this research question and pursue two goals: first, to explain the specific empirical puzzle; second, to develop a general argument on the environmental policy profile of right-wing populist parties. We conte...
Dieses Kapitel führt in die Methoden zur Analyse der programmatischen Ausrichtung von Parteien und des Parteienwettbewerbs ein. Im ersten Abschnitt gehen wir zunächst auf die Frage ein, welche Bedeutung die Positionierung von Parteien zu sachpolitischen Fragen in einer repräsentativen Demokratie hat und wie sachpolitische Übereinstimmungen und Diff...
Wie die vorangegangenen Kapiteln zeigen, weisen die Landesverbände der deutschen Parteien eine ausgesprochene programmatische Vielfalt auf. In diesem Kapitel untersuchen wir, inwieweit die Programmatik der Landesverbände im Zusammenhang mit dem regionalen, gesellschaftlichen und ökonomischen Kontext der Parteien steht. Wir gehen dann der Frage nach...
In diesem Kapitel werden – getrennt nach Bundesländern – die Entwicklung der programmatischen Positionen der Parteien auf der wirtschafts- und sozialpolitischen Dimension sowie der gesellschaftspolitischen Dimension für den Zeitraum von 1990 bis 2019 skizziert. Nach einem Abriss der historischen Entwicklung des Parteienwettbewerbs im jeweiligen Bun...
In Ländern, in denen sich politische Parteien auf mehreren Ebenen eines föderalen oder dezentralen politischen Systems eigenständig konstituieren, beeinflussen Wahlen, aber auch sach- und personalpolitische Entscheidungen einzelner Parteien auf der einen Ebene regelmäßig die Entwicklung der Partei oder des gesamten Parteienwettbewerbs auf anderen E...
Das vorliegende Buch beschäftigt sich mit der Entstehung, wechselseitigen Abhängigkeit und Entwicklung der programmatischen Ausrichtung der Landesverbände der deutschen Parteien. Mit einer Inhaltsanalyse der Bundes- und Landtagswahlprogramme der Parteien über einen Zeitraum von 30 Jahren (1990–2019) wurde aufzeigt, in welchem Ausmaß sich die inhalt...
Unterscheidet sich die CDU im Saarland in ihren programmatischen Standpunkten und ihrem Themenprofil von den Christdemokraten in Schleswig-Holstein oder in den Stadtstaaten Berlin, Bremen und Hamburg? Steht die SPD in Baden-Württemberg oder Hessen weiter links als der sozialdemokratische Landesverband im benachbarten Rheinland-Pfalz? Gibt es progra...
In this book, 30 contributions provide a comprehensive overview of theories and findings from research on political attitudes and political behaviour, subdivided into the fields of ‘political communication’, ‘political attitudes’, ‘political participation’, ‘voting behaviour’ and ‘methods’.
Eine Fülle von Studien hat sich in den letzten Jahrzehnten mit der zurückgehenden Erklärungskraft der Zugehörigkeit von Bürgern zu bestimmten sozialen Gruppen für das individuelle Wahlverhalten in westeuropäischen Demokratien beschäftigt. Der wirtschaftliche und gesellschaftliche Wandel hat zu einem teils deutlichen Rückgang der über den cleavage-A...
Given the increasingly polarized debates in many modern democracies over migration and integration, the behaviour of members of parliament (MPs) with a migrant background has important implications for patterns of representation. Drawing on role congruity theory, we hypothesize that MPs with a migrant background deliver more legislative speeches in...
Federal politics has often influenced elections to the Hesse state parliament . This was also true for the election 2018, which was not only decisive for the future of the incumbent black-green coalition government led by Prime Minister Volker Bouffier (CDU), but also for the fate of the federal party chairs of CDU and SPD, Angela Merkel and Andrea...
Die globalen Migrationsströme haben Wahlverhalten, Parteiensysteme und Parteienwettbewerb in Europa und Deutschland drastisch verändert. In Folge des Zustroms von Flüchtlingen im Spätsommer und Herbst 2015 erstarkte die zuvor geschwächte „Alternative für Deutschland“ (AfD) und zog seitdem nicht nur in alle Landesparlamente, sondern auch in den Bund...
Parliamentary debates and the discussion on different law proposals are a key part of the process of policy making. We argue in this article that a high economic problem pressure in the region an MP represents will affect the MP’s legislative speechmaking. We also hypothesise that parties tend to coordinate their speakers in parliament to display a...
Die Kurzanalyse berichtet die Ergebnisse einer Expertenumfrage zur programmatischen Ausrichtung der deutschen Parteien im Herbst 2017. Online befragt wurden 93 Politikwissenschaftlerinnen und Politikwissenschaftler. Erhoben wurden die Positionen von acht Parteien auf sechs sachpolitischen Dimensionen sowie die Wichtigkeit dieser Themenbereiche für...
Handlungs- und Entscheidungstheorien gelten als erfolgversprechende Ansätze zur Erklärung sozialen und politischen Handelns. Handeln wird dabei als das Ergebnis eines Prozesses gesehen, bei dem Akteure aus verschiedenen verfügbaren Handlungsalternativen diejenige auswählen, die bei gegebenen Rahmenbedingungen und erwarteten Handlungen anderer Akteu...
Parties have strong incentives to present a relatively cohesive policy position to the voters across different levels of a political system. However, the adoption of inclusive forms of candidate selection methods like primaries could result in the selection of top candidates for elections on the subnational sphere who are not favoured by the party...
The process of coalition formation following the 2017 Bundestag election was the most difficult in German post-war history. For the first time Germany saw negotiations fail, a minority government being discussed as a real possibility, and the federal president involved as formateur in coalition politics. The aim of this contribution is to explain w...
Parliamentary debates provide an arena where Members of Parliament (MPs) present, challenge, or defend public policies. However, the “plenary bottleneck” allows the party leadership to decide who participates in a debate. We argue that in this decision the timing of a debate matters: in proximity of elections, the leadership should be concerned wit...
Do female representatives participate less often in legislative debates, and does it matter which topic is debated? Drawing on the role incongruity theory, we hypothesise that women take the parliamentary floor less often because of the gender stereotypes that are likely to guide the behaviour of party representatives. Such underrepresentation is l...
How does EU funding to European regions affect sub-national parties’ support for European integration? This paper aims at analysing whether the EU regional development policy contributes to setting up support for EU institutions and European integration and thus strengthens the whole ‘European idea’ among political parties. To answer this research...
We develop a simple spatial model suggesting that Members of Parliament strive for the inclusion of the head of state’s party in coalitions formed in mixed democratic polities, and that parliamentary parties try to assemble coalitions that minimize the ideological distance to the head of state. We identify the German local level of government as fu...
This case study deals with Thuringia, a region which is located in the Centre East of Germany. We chose Thuringia as a case study for several reasons. First, Thuringia is one of the most prosperous regions in the eastern part of Germany in economic terms, but still did not reach the economic level of most of the West German regions. Secondly, Thuri...
This case study deals with Baden-Württemberg, a region which is located in the south-west of Germany. We chose Baden-Württemberg as a case study for several reasons. First, Baden- Württemberg is one of the most prosperous regions and even the most innovative in Germany and Europe in economic terms. Secondly, due to its economic strength, Baden-Würt...
How does the degree to which European citizens see themselves represented by political parties relate to their willingness to participate in an election? We argue that the closer citizens are to the parties running in an election in terms of the socio-economic left-right conflict and the European integration policy dimension, the more likely they p...
This contribution applies the „strength of weakness“ argument to coalition negotiations in the German states. We investigate whether parties with internally disputed platforms are more successful in transferring their policy preferences into coalition agreements. In addition, we examine whether sub-national party branches that (have to) form a coal...
We argue that political parties take not only the economic conditions into account when developing a position on entrepreneurship and self‐employment but also consider the “heritage” of a socialist state, which can influence the preferences of voters regarding this issue area. We test our hypotheses on the basis of an analysis of election manifesto...
Does it matter which electoral districts Members of Parliament (MPs) represent when participating in parliamentary debates? We suggest that the party leadership, in particular in governing parties, will try to keep MPs off the floor if they come from regions with economic problems, because such MPs are more likely to deviate from the party line. Th...
The popularity function literature has traditionally focused on incumbent government support, even under coalition governments. Here, we shift the focus from the government to the parties. To what extent are German parties held accountable for economic conditions when they hold the Chancellorship, serve in coalition, or sit in opposition? Using See...
Mixed-member electoral systems are supposed to simultaneously produce coherent parties and ensure the representation of local interests. Whether these goals are achieved depends on the ability of parties and districts to control members of parliament (MPs). We regard the competitiveness of MPs’ bids for renomination as a crucial indicator of the de...
Mit Band 10 des Jahrbuchs für Handlungs- und Entscheidungstheorie gehen gleich drei wesentliche Neuerungen einher, die das Jahrbuch für Autoren wie auch Leser attraktiver machen sollen. Der erste Punkt bezieht sich auf die Sprache. Auf der einen Seite war es eine zentrale Intention der Gründungs-Herausgeber des Jahrbuchs, auch im deutschsprachigen...
Der im Sommer 2015 einsetzende Fluchtlingsstrom nach Deutschland und die Fulle an Konsequenzen, die sich durch dessen Handhabung seitens der Bundesregierung und andere Faktoren, wie unter anderem die Angriffe auf Frauen in der Silvesternacht 2015, ergeben haben, spielten eine zentrale Rolle fur das Ergebnis der Landtagswahlen im Marz 2016.
The popularity function literature has traditionally focused on incumbent government support, even under coalition governments. Here, we shift the focus from the government to the parties. To what extent are German parties held accountable for economic conditions when they hold the Chancellorship, serve in coalition, or sit in opposition? Using See...
A large number of studies in comparative politics demonstrate the impact of European integration on political decision-making in EU member states as well as in countries that wish to join the EU. What is surprisingly missing is a comparative analysis of how EU support affects the European policy preferences of parties from those regional units whic...
This article examines the determinants of coalition formation on the local level. In addition to standard office- and policy-seeking variables, we incorporate the local institutional setting and the constraints on local coalition politics emerging from patterns of party competition at the superior level of the political system. We test our expectat...
Der Beitrag zeichnet die Entwicklung des Parteienwettbewerbs in Baden-Württemberg zwischen 2011 und 2016 nach und geht dabei insbesondere den Fragen nach, warum die Sozialdemokraten so schwach in diesem Bundesland verankert sind, wie sich die programmatischen Positionen der Parteien entwickelt haben und welche Koalitionsoptionen nach der Landtagswa...
The analysis of voting behaviour – and particularly the reasons for the increasing vote share of the National Socialists – in the Weimar Republic and the socio-structural composition of the electorate of the NSDAP are scrutinized by numerous studies. However, a detailed analysis of the results of the Reichstag election on 12 November 1933 is still...
Scholars of coalition politics have increasingly begun to focus on conflict within coalitions. Here we examine the role of coalition agreements in managing intracoalitional conflict. We argue that there is a trade-off between making policy agreements at the coalition’s formation (e.g., by making very detailed policy platforms) and postponing the is...
By referring to the theoretical and empirical literature on ‘same gender voting’ and the ‘modern gender gap’, this contribution aims to analyse whether gender played a role in party choice in Bundestag elections. We concentrate on the time period between 1998 and 2013, enabling us to cover three elections while Angela Merkel was the chancellor cand...
Dieser Beitrag analysiert die Determinanten der Distanz zwischen den inhaltlichen Positionen einer Regierungspartei und dem zwischen allen Koalitionsparteien ausgehandelten Koalitionsabkommen. Wir argumentieren – mit Rückgriff auf das „strength of weakness“-Argument – zum einen, dass ideologisch-programmatisch eher diffus auftretende Parteien sich...
Der Beitrag geht der Frage nach, ob ein Einfluss des Geschlechts auf die Wahlabsicht bei Wahlen zum Deutschen Bundestag zwischen 1998 und 2013 vorliegt. Auf der Grundlage der Literatur zum „modern gender gap“ einerseits sowie zum „same gender voting“ anderseits werden Hypothesen dahingehend abgeleitet, dass Frauen einen geringeren Anreiz haben soll...
Das Regieren in Koalitionen stellt in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland auf Bundes- wie Landesebene die Regel dar. Dies ist auch den Wählern bewusst: So nimmt die Debatte um mögliche Zusammensetzungen der nächsten Regierung nicht nur eine hervorgehobene Rolle in der Berichterstattung zu den jeweiligen Wahlkämpfen ein, sondern beeinflusst auch in signi...
This study focuses on the allocation of politicians to cabinet offices in different institutional settings. We argue that cabinet ministers are appointed with the aim of minimizing the policy distance to the most important principal, which could be the Prime Minister, the coalition, or the individual parties that form the coalition. We advance this...
In analysing speeches made by legislators, this book provides theoretical and empirical answers to questions such as: Why do some Members of Parliament (MPs) take the parliamentary floor and speak more than others, and why do some MPs deviate more than others from the ideological position of their party? The authors evaluate their hypotheses on leg...
We now turn our attention to the determinants influencing the degree of intra-party cohesion, and empirically analyse what regulates whether an MP deviates from the party line when making parliamentary speeches. Hence, the overarching question of this chapter is ‘Which MPs, and under what circumstances, deviate from the party line when making speec...
This concluding chapter discusses some of the main findings of our study of legislative debates across seven European parliaments. For example, we have stressed the importance of taking gender into account when analysing these findings, and we here discuss the conclusions that can be drawn from the comparative patterns found when analysing the role...
This chapter, and the one following it, contain the main comparative empirical analyses of the book, beginning with the first research question, which focuses on floor participation in European parliaments. Since the empirical analyses are contrasting, comparing across parties, governments and institutional contexts, this of course also leads us to...
This chapter deals with methodological issues and comprises three main parts. The first describes the research design and case selection, illustrates the context of legislative debates in the seven countries analysed here and describes some of the differences and similarities across the cases. The second discusses whether an analysis of legislative...
When presenting a theoretical argument of the choices of individual actors, we should first specify their potential goals. When aiming to explain parliamentary speechmaking, we should thus specify the likely incentives of MPs and party leaders. We here follow a classical approach taken in the previous literature, assuming that MPs ‘are strategic ac...
Research in public policy and political economy has provided many insights in the evolution of public resistance against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the last two decades. But how does the partisan composition of a government, its programmatic orientation and the allocation of cabinet offices affect policy making in this specific area?...
The UK now has a number of Directly Elected Local Authority Mayors, as well as the elected Mayor of London. But the extra layer of governance (and accountability) has implications for coalition formation at the local level. Drawing on research carried out in Germany, Martin Gross and Marc Debus argue that local politicians take the party affiliatio...
Various strands of literature in comparative politics suggest that there is a differential impact of the type of government and their supporting legislative coalitions in parliamentary democracies, e.g. in terms of their size and ideological heterogeneity, on the potential to induce policy change. Most studies in this area, however, focus on govern...
The popularity function literature has traditionally focused on incumbent government support, even under coalition governments. Here, we shift the focus from the government to the parties. To what extent are German parties held accountable for economic conditions when they hold the Chancellorship, serve in coalition, or sit in opposition? Using See...
Theoretical and empirical models of legislative decision making in parliamentary democracies typically neglect the policy preferences of individual MPs and instead focus on political parties and possible institutional constraints. We argue that MPs actually make judgments and decisions on the basis of their preferences, which are shaped by their pe...
