Introduction: German Party Membership in the 21st Century

The party membership decline experienced in Germany in the last decades raises a number of theoretical, empirical, and normative questions, a selection of which is addressed in this special issue of German Politics. In this introduction, we summarise some of the central arguments and findings presented. Although the individual articles take various perspectives and present specific insights, as a whole they allow for drawing some consequences: Firstly, party membership decline seems to be irreversible, secondly, it does neither imply an inadequate organisational linkage between society and state institutions nor, thirdly, a threat to democracy.     

The PDS in Western Germany: An Empirical Study of PDS Local Politicians

Even though its leadership continues to insist that the PDS is a national party of the left, it is de facto an eastern German regional party. In the last several years, however, the PDS has found some measure of success at the local level in western Germany, where it now claims over 100 seats in local parliaments. Emboldened by this success, party leaders have suggested that the PDS-West is gradually 'putting down roots' in the old states of Germany, thus increasing the party's electoral chances there. This article, based on an empirical study carried out from September 2000 to March 2001, looks at the experiences of the PDS at the local level in western Germany. It finds that although many of the problems identified by scholars as standing in the way of PDS electoral success in the West are very much in evidence at the local level as well, the party has nevertheless made enormous strides in gaining political expertise, developing partnerships with local groups, and, in general, becoming more attractive to voters. Whether the PDS can translate these positive experiences above and beyond the local level remains open to debate. Nevertheless the opportunity is there.     

Governance from Below in Bolivia: A Theory of Local Government with Two Empirical Tests

This article examines decentralization through the lens of the local dynamics it unleashed in the much‐noted case of Bolivia. It argues that the national effects of decentralization are largely the sum of its local‐level effects. To understand decentralization, therefore, we must first understand how local government works. The article explores the deep economic and institutional determinants of government quality in two extremes of municipal performance. From this it derives a model of local government responsiveness as the product of political openness and substantive competition. The quality of local politics, in turn, emerges endogenously as the joint product of the lobbying and political engagement of local firms and interests and the organizational density and ability of civil society. The analysis tests the theory's predictions on a database containing all Bolivian municipalities. The theory proves robust. The combined methodology provides a higher‐order empirical rigor than either approach can alone.     

The Persistence of Confessional Political Cultures in Switzerland: Some Puzzling Empirical Evidence from Local Parties

A comprehensive comparative study of Swiss local parties (1990) shows that ideological positions and attitudes toward political issues still differ considerably in catholic and protestant settings. Catholic parties are more likely to define themselves as “centrist”, while protestant groupings show more dispersion on the right as well as the left wing of the ideological spectrum. Among catholic parties, positions on the left-right scale and attitudes toward specific political issues are weakly associated, while in protestant settings, the coupling between ideology and concrete issues is rather strong. In protestant populations, it is found that specific occupational and class segments differ significantly by their selective preferences for either leftist or rightist parties, while in catholic settings, such differences are attenuated. Astonishingly, most of these regularities persist or get even more pronounced in communities with a highly modernized occupational structure and in groupings with a younger membership. Following Greeley (1989), it is speculated that confessional traditions survive in the “sedimented” form of implicit folks traditions and habitualizations, and that they function as “semantic codes” which find additional ways of expression in the course of societal development.     

欧债危机:一个德国视角的评估

从德国的视角看,欧债危机的根本原因在于PIIGS国家("欧猪国家")在享受超出自身收入水平的生活方式上走得太远,导致其政府的持续预算赤字。一位著名的美国经济学家持不同见解,他认为成员国的竞争力差异以及加入共同货币区导致的政策工具的丧失使得欧元已经失败。德国政府相信有两个政策工具可以解决危机:第一,制定强制所有成员国采取预算紧缩的财政协议;第二,创建一个基金用以救助受到破产威胁的成员国政府。包括发行欧元区共同债券和赋予欧洲中央银行以最后贷款人地位在内的一系列政策措施都被德国政府拒绝了。德国政府强烈反对将欧元区转化为转移支付联盟。而由德国政府提出的政策措施也都归于失败,因为预算紧缩政策导致了"欧猪国家"的经济负增长,进而加大了其减少公债的难度。在德国政府看来,为保证"欧猪国家"不放松降低财政赤字的努力,继续保持金融市场上的压力是必要的。笔者认为,除非德国政府采取针对经济弱国的更加合作的态度,否则欧元区将极有可能归于终结。     

Putting Local Associations Into their Context. Preliminary Results from a Swiss Study of Local Associations

The paper presents results from the Swiss case of the European comparative project CID (Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy). This project examines the relationship between political institutional assets and civic and political engagement in several Western and Eastern European countries. The paper seeks to investigate how civic engagement can be generated and shaped by a given institutional and political context as well as by a peculiar community size. The central hypothesis is that the context affects the character of local participation. To verify this, the papers examines two different Swiss cantons: the German speaking Canton of Bern and the French speaking Canton of Vaud. Moreover, for each canton, four local communities of different size have been selected. This research design discusses how participation is fostered by a more open political opportunity structure (the German canton), and how this combines with the size of the community.     

How to Become an Independent Agency: The Creation of the German Federal Network Agency

The German Federal Network Agency (FNA) was established in 2005 as multi-utilities regulator thereby creating Germany's first energy regulator. It maintains a quite exceptional position in the landscape of German agencies because of its far-reaching independence from political influence. This independence represents an empirical puzzle, because in Germany no comprehensive agencification of the federal administration can be observed and independent agencies are rather an exception than a rule. This article explores whether this puzzle can be plausibly solved by the approach of institutional isomorphism. It argues that the German government faced informal pressure from the European Commission and its endeavour to build a network of European energy regulators at the European level. Furthermore, independent regulatory agencies increasingly became a kind of guiding model in the utilities sector. Therefore, mechanisms of coercive and mimetic isomorphism can be seen as plausible explanations of the agency's independence.     

Municipal Democratisation in Rural Latin America: Methodological Insights from Ecuador

As municipal governments in Latin America acquire greater responsibility for public goods and services and the promotion of economic and social development, and play a greater role in local citizenship, questions about the quality of municipal democracy also need to be taken much more seriously. This article proposes a 'relative power approach' that examines the distribution of social power at the microregional level and its impact on municipal governance as the starting point for the analysis of municipal democratisation in Latin America. The approach lays particular emphasis on historical changes in the distribution of local productive assets, the political organisation of local social actors, coalitions between and divisions within local social sectors and the ways in which local power relations are shaped by global and national forces. The article then explores the practical application of the relative power approach to three municipalities in rural Ecuador.     

Berlin's Republic: Parliamentary government in a German land

Berlin is the only German Land that has had to manage its own reunification and originally many hoped that it would turn into a model for east–west reconciliation. Yet 15 years later there is widespread consensus that Berlin failed to live up to the challenges of the time and adequately deal with the consequences of reunification. Instead of embarking on structural reforms Berlin produced its own version of a Reformstau. The article describes and examines some basic features of the party system in Berlin and the Berlin polity. It will thus give an answer to the question as to how unification affected the institutional setting in this Land. Overall it will be shown that the Reformstau in Berlin cannot be explained by a fragmented political system or powerful veto players. Political stagnation in Berlin rather was due to the combined effects of party system change, institutional stagnation, and constitutionally inhibited political leadership.     

Small but Significant: Why Small Parties Benefit from a Presidentialised German Party System

Poguntke and Webb suggest a trend toward the presidentialisation of modern democracies. Small parties would seem to be disadvantaged by presidentialisation, given a traditional lack of emphasis on personalities in their governing and campaign styles. This study attempts to show that smaller parties in the Federal Republic are actually advantaged by presidentialisation as the policy convergence of the larger CDU and SPD coupled with declining levels of partisanship in the electorate have made smaller parties more relevant in the politics of the Federal Republic.     

科索沃政治发展:从托管到“独立”

科索沃的政治发展在两个层面上运行,一是在政治权力归属上,由联合国向欧盟和科索沃当局过渡;二是在政治体制建设上,构建并实行议会制和三权分立、并关注社群权利保护的体制模式.在这两个层面的发展中,科索沃独特的国际地位和内部环境既提供了动力,也构成了障碍.     

从文化共同体到后古典民族国家:德国民族国家演进浅析

长期封建割据造成德国民族国家的形成晚于英、法等传统西方国家。其建立民族国家的路径是先有民族,后有国家。德国民族国家是建立在由血缘、历史、语言、文化等要素构成的"文化共同体"的基础上,这一文化共同体同时也构成了德国民族认同的核心要素。受到历史和地缘政治因素的影响,德国民族国家的发展道路较为特殊,这也决定了其融入西方过程的曲折与漫长。20世纪90年代,两德重新统一后,德国与其他欧盟成员国一样进入后古典民族国家形态,将主权部分地让渡给超国家共同体。德国民族国家目前需要解决的是欧盟治理结构中的"新德国问题"。     

Populist Communication and Publicity: An Empirical Study of Contextual Differences in Switzerland

Abstract: This study analyzes the context‐dependency of populist communication and asks whether there are variations in populist communication for representatives of different kinds of parties. In contrast to previous research on European populism, which mostly considers only the right‐wing, this study includes the entire scope of political parties; thus allowing for the possibility of the diffusion of populism in contemporary politics. The empirical contribution is a multilevel analysis of speeches in non‐public and public forums (closed parliamentary committees, open parliamentary floors, and the talk show ‘Arena’) on immigration and asylum amendments in Switzerland. A so‐called populist party, the Swiss People’s Party, played a significant role in drafting the legislation. Analysis reveals that a) different public settings influence populist communication differently; b) a non‐populist party, the Christian‐democrats, employs more populist communication on average than any other party and its populism is employed more consistently across contexts than that of the Swiss People’s Party; c) but when speaking in media forms, the Swiss People’s Party employs substantially more populist communication than any other party. Thus, the type of public forum does not uniformly contribute to higher levels of populist communication, but rather the effect of forum type varies substantially by party.     

Why the EU Still Matters in Turkish Domestic Politics: Insights from Recent Reforms in Migration Policy

Abstract

In view of Turkey’s increasing distance from the European Union (EU), the continued partial alignment with EU standards is often attributed either to domestic factors, or to diffusion processes induced by external actors other than the EU. However, based on interviews with officials from Turkey and the European Commission on recent reforms in migration policy, this article argues that two factors are responsible for continued EU influence on policy processes. First, the EU is still able to set incentives for compliance. Second, the instrument for pre-accession assistance has an impact that goes beyond that of a mere facilitator of domestically defined interests.     

Politicians' Ideas of Ideal Politicians: Findings from German and Austrian State Parliaments

In recent years, both the individualisation and the mediatisation of politics have accelerated a process of political personalisation, a process which has attracted considerable attention from empirical analysts. But in comparison with media-related and citizen/voter-related studies, studies focusing on political actors are rare. As a consequence, little is known about the perceptions of politicians or their attitudes towards personalisation. These perceptions are presumed to be vital for the relationships between citizens and MPs, specifically with regard to leadership, representativeness, and responsiveness. Against this backdrop, an empirical analysis was conducted of the perceptions of German and Austrian MPs regarding the politics- and public performance-related attributes of ‘ideal’ politicians. Differences were found related to age, sex, and country and, foremost, an amalgamation of attributes which are labelled ‘role-near’, political attributes, and ‘role-distant’, that is media and communication skills.