Die proportionale Ministerienaufteilung in deutschen Koalitionsregierungen: Akzeptierte Norm oder das Ausnutzen strategischer Vorteile?

In this paper, we corroborate Gamson’s Law for a data set including German coalition governments on the federal and Länder level. We further tackle the question of how to explain this regularity. Here, we conclude that it is not the bargaining power of parties resulting from seat distribution that could be able to explain Gamson’s Law. In fact, we identify Gamson’s Law as a behavioural norm which evolved over time in Germany. We finally confirm the conjecture that on average smaller parties profit and larger parties suffer from deviations from Gamson’s Law. However, there is also a strong party bias which is able to invert this effect for single parties as e. g. the Greens or the Party of Democratic Socialism. Further variables such as the size of the party system or the number of parties which form a coalition government can also explain some deviations from the Gamson’s Law.     

Cybervictimization,self-esteem,and social relationships among German secondary school students

By differentiating between five specific forms of cybervictimization (denigration, betrayal, social exclusion, cyberstalking, happy slapping), the present study examined the multifaceted structure of cybervictimization and specific relationships o these five forms of cybervictimization with students’ self-esteem and social relationships. Moreover, mediating effects of self-esteem were explored. Factor analyses supported the five-factor structure. Self-esteem and social relationships were negatively related to almost all five forms of cybervictimization. However, hierarchical regression analysis showed that only student–student relationships were negatively predictive of social exclusion, while only teacher–student relationships were negatively predictive of denigration, betrayal, and cyberstalking. Further, self-esteem appeared to be a negative predictor and mediator of denigration and social exclusion. Girls experienced more betrayal than boys. Older students reported lower social exclusion but more cyberstalking than younger students.     

Does Political Advertising Persuade?

Well over $1 billion was spent on televised political advertising in the U.S. in 2004. Given the ubiquity of the 30 second spot, one might presume that ads must affect viewers’ vote choices. Somewhat surprisingly, though, scholars have yet to make much progress in confirming this claim. In this paper, we leverage a comprehensive dataset that tracks political ads in the nation’s top media markets and a survey of presidential and U.S. Senate voters in 2004. We ask whether exposure to presidential and Senate advertising influences voters’ evaluations of candidates and the choices that they make at the ballot box. In the end, we find considerable evidence that advertising persuades—and that its impact varies depending on the characteristics of the viewer.

Personalisierung der Politik in Mehrparteiensystemen am Beispiel deutscher Bundestagswahlen seit 1980

Personalization of politics is investigated as relative importance of leading politicians for the party vote (Zweitstimme) in German Bundestag elections, compared to the importance of parties and the recall of voting behavior in the last federal election. Contrary to recent German research on the impact of special candidate attributes (competence, integrity etc.) we interpret general evaluations of parties and the leading politicians as the most immediate utility attributes or distance measures of the options listed on the ballot. On the basis of this model, of discrete choice analysis as the statistical method and of the Politbarometer data of the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, Mannheim, we estimate candidate effects in three regions of Germany, characterized by slightly different party systems (West Germany without Bavaria, Bavaria with the CSU instead of the CDU and East Germany with the PDS as a more important party than the FDP or the Greens). It is shown that region is important for personalization, that a general trend towards increasing personalization does not exist, that the most popular politicians sometimes lose their capacity to attract voters to their party and that both attractiveness for floating voters and repulsiveness for former party voters must be taken into account when interpreting effect parameters.