Search

How should an excessively large parliament be effectively reduced in size without violating constitutional principles? This is a question that the German Bundestag has discussed since the introduction of the 2013 electoral reform measure. Facing a Bundestag consisting of 709 members and some public dissatisfaction, a reform measure to decrease the parliament's size was adopted in 2020. However, the 20 Bundestag, elected in September 2021, again increased in size to 735 members. The newly adopted electoral law still uses plurality voting to select the directly elected lawmakers. It is widely known that selection using the plurality rule is flawed because it violates the principle of majority decision. Aside from this aspect, this paper demonstrates that the plurality rule itself contributes to the excessive size of the parliament. By removing the flaws caused by the plurality rule and replacing this voting scheme with a Condorcet method (simple-majority rule), the targeted reduction of the size of the Bundestag can be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Raumforschung und Raumordnung is the property of Oekom Verlag GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The new electoral law in the state of Hamburg, which was first used in the 2011 elections for the state parliament, abolished the optional overall list vote in the electoral districts and thus forced voters to cast preference votes for individual candidates. Supporters of the new electoral law assume that voters will inform themselves better about the candidates. This assumption contrasts with the voters' tendency to choose their favourite option based on the little information which is provided on the ballot paper. We show that the new electoral law has missed its target and that voters rely heavily on the ballot paper cues, resulting in the replication of the behaviour pattern they were used to under the optional list vote and earlier under the closed list. Most importantly the ballot position has the largest effect on being elected to the parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article seeks to explain the bargaining success of Poland and Germany in EU lawmaking. Specifically, it explores how the similarity of Poland's and Germany's preferences affects their bargaining success and whether it is more beneficial than their proximity to other member states holding the highest voting power. The analysis conducted on the DEUII dataset leads to three conclusions. First, there is a strong discrepancy between Poland's and Germany's preferences. Second, despite having divergent preferences, both Poland and Germany are more successful when they approximate or hold similar positions on EU legislation. Importantly, this relationship is robust to the extremity of their preferences, the status quo position, their closeness to the Parliament and Commission, the proposal's multidimensionality, procedure or policy area. Third, bringing preferences closer provides both Poland and Germany with higher success than moving their policy positions towards other pivotal member states, namely France, the UK (except for Poland), Italy and Spain. Overall, the paper demonstrates that mutual cooperation (i.e. the approximation or exchange of preferences) is extremely profitable for Poland and Germany as their success is strongly dependent on the level of similarity of their preferences, irrespective of other negotiating conditions and relations with pivotal actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As compensation for their disempowerment in the process of European integration, national parliaments have been provided with various new rights and powers since the 1990s, culminating in the current provisions of the Lisbon Treaty. This paper argues, however, that rather than simply re-enhancing traditional powers of national parliaments, these reforms imply ideas of a new type of parliamentary democracy in Europe. It identifies three different roles for national parliaments in the EU: preventing rather than shaping legislation (gatekeeping role), cooperating with other parliaments and supranational institutions (networking role), and adopting a uniform mode control of government across all party groups (unitary scrutiniser role). All these roles require a significant deviation from the standard role legislatures usually play in European parliamentary democracies. The paper briefly explores how national parliaments in two ‘old’ (France, Germany) and one ‘new’ (Poland) member state fulfil these three new roles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Kriminologisches Journal is the property of Julius Beltz GmbH & Co. KG Beltz Juventa and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In mixed-member proportional systems with closed party lists, such as the German Bundestag election, candidates’ electoral fate is widely determined by their placement on party lists. Despite its importance for the final composition of parliaments, candidates’ list placement in such systems is still under-researched. The literature on political careers has revealed a number of prevalent recruitment factors, but how these factors actually affect candidates’ placement on party lists has rarely been tested. This paper puts forward the question of what recruitment factors affected candidates’ chances to be allocated viable list positions in the 2013 German Bundestag election. The findings suggest that in particular candidates’ incumbency status, their number of prior candidacies and district nominations play key roles in shaping candidates’ electoral viability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the effect of legislature size on public spending? An answer to this question is provided by Weingast et al. (J Polit Econ 89(4):642-664, 1981), whose 'law of 1/ n' posits that an increase in the number of elected representatives always leads to an increase in public spending. Because elected politicians regard the tax base as a common pool from which they can finance specific projects for their constituencies, and these specific constituencies internalize the full benefits of the projects, but only bear a fraction of the costs (projects are financed from the common tax base), fiscal inefficiency will increase with the number of representatives. In this paper, I test the validity of the 'law of 1/ n' using a dataset of 9325 German municipalities between 2008 and 2010. Through the application of a regression discontinuity design, many of the methodological pitfalls of previous studies can be avoided and a valid estimation of the causal effect of legislature size on public spending for German municipalities can be determined. The results do not corroborate the positive findings of previous studies, which generally supported the implications of the 'law of 1/ n'. For the years 2008-2010, I find a negative effect of legislature size on public spending in German municipal councils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The activities of Sorbian deputies in the People's Chamber, the highest legislative body in the German Democratic Republic, is a subject that has yet to be fully studied. This paper outlines the main findings of our research, undertaken in Germany in the years 2014-2016. For our study of Sorbian deputies, we have divided the existence of the People's Chamber into three basic periods: the Era of Kurt Krjeńc (1950-1964/1967), the Era of Jurij Grós (1967-1990), and the Era of Democratic Changes (1990). Each period is associated with important figures from Sorbian Lusatia. We counted a total of 28 deputies in the People's Chamber who were in some way associated with life in this region. However, there was no chance of promoting the interests of the Sorbs in the People's Chamber, since despite being the GDR's highest legislative body, its role was purely formal and symbolic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature on the determinants of party unity, one pathway has remained largely neglected: division of labour. Given their workload, members of parliament (MPs) are only thoroughly concerned with a subset of policies. We argue that this results in MPs casting fewer dissenting votes on matters within their area of specialization since they have had the opportunity to shape the party line there. Regression analyses using data for the German Bundestag support this hypothesis, including four important refinements: Not only the current but also past membership in the responsible committee reduces an MP's defection probability. Additionally, this pattern is more pronounced for policy spokespersons and for less consequential, i.e., non-legislative votes as well as for issues less salient to the MP's party. The results have implications for our understanding of MPs' legislative behaviour, the functioning of parliaments as institutions and for the relationship between parties, MPs and voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a growing convergence in the attitudes and behaviours of voters in the unified Germany, research shows that eastern and western German voters continue to differ over general ideological issues. How well does the party system in the unified Germany represent this ideological diversity? To answer this question, this paper analyses the extent to which (1) parties-in-electorates, (2) parties-in-parliament and (3) parties-in-government agree ideologically with voters from both regions between 1980 and 2013. Hypothetically, a lop-sided representation pattern, where the ideological location of parties converges primarily with those of western voters, suggests that existing ideological differences become institutionalised. Contrary to this scenario, we find that the German party system effectively articulates the ideological preferences of western and eastern voters. The same applies to parliaments and governments where the election outcome rather than any institutional bias affects the distance of parties to voters in the East and the West. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, the author shall analyse the phenomenon of “rationalised parliamentarism„ in a historical context and its modification in Federative Republic of Germany in 1949. By applying the method of institutional analysis, the author shall present the power structure in FR Germany, as a model of rationalised parliamentarism, with the accent on executive power. Modern German parliamentarism represents a stable political system, in which power is restriced by constitutional procedures, but its centre - Federal government headed by the Chancellor, is, at the same time, clearly defined and protected. The stability becomes a predominant aspect through the character of relations between executive and legislative power, and through certain institutes, such as for instance constructive motion of censure against government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oral questions are usually seen as a procedure designed for political conflict. Yet question time may serve other purposes depending on the institutional setting, the political context and the policy field. By comparing the use of oral questions on the defence issue in the national parliaments of four Western democracies, the paper identifies a specific characteristic of questioning in each lower house: political conflict in Germany, internal dissent in the United Kingdom, reward of policy expertise in Spain and local issues in France. Such diverse uses of questioning procedures impact differently on the quality of the accountability process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current system to elect the German Bundestag (i.e. German Federal Parliament) has a major defect: more votes for one party can lead to less seats in the parliament for that same party - the so called negative voting weight. The German Federal Constitution Court has requested the Parliament to modify the electoral system in order to avoid this malfunction. There are lots of possible solutions to that problem. In this paper we attempt to evaluate several possible modifications from a Social Choice perspective. We introduce a simple system of conditions for electoral systems by which we classify possible modifications. It follows that there cannot exist an electoral system that satisfies all of these conditions. There are solutions, however, which satisfy more conditions than other possible modifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the articles in this volume and places them in the broader discussion about German politics and comparative legislative behaviour. I describe their collective understanding of German law-making and highlight the strong empirical foundation of the research. Some challenges of the research agenda appear after comparing and contrasting the individual articles. Specifically, I start with a simple veto game and then amend and scrutinise this model using theoretical and empirical insights from this volume and the larger literature on legislative politics. The article closes by suggesting two future areas of research: institutional transformation and policy dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses post-legislative examination of Acts of Parliament in Great Britain and the potential for developing more formal and systematic methods of reviewing legislation after it has been brought into force. Post-legislative scrutiny in the jurisdictions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Germany and France are also described. The primary reason for more systematic post-legislative scrutiny, is to see whether legislation is working out in practice as intended.

This paper takes a fresh look at the midterm loss in German elections and argues that government type is a crucial determinant of midterm loss. Using panel regressions on a newly compiled data set covering all state elections during the period 1949–2004, we find that systematic midterm losses occur only when both chambers of the federal legislature (Bundestag and Bundesrat) are controlled by one party or a party coalition. Prior research has failed to discover this important regularity. These findings lend strong support to electoral balancing models while calling into doubt more traditional explanations of midterm loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parliamentary systems can be characterised by particular patterns of interaction between the executive, the majority parties and the opposition parties in parliament. The basic argument outlined in this paper is that in order to understand the impact of European integration on national parliamentary democracies we have to find out how these patterns are adjusted. The article starts by identifying the basic social mechanisms that drive the interaction of the mentioned groups of actors and by describing how they are modified in European multi-level governance. In this context, members of national parliaments are faced with a dilemma: Successful scrutiny can undermine the effectiveness of European governance whereas a permissive parliament causes a legitimacy deficit. Through case studies on the Europeanisation of the parliamentary systems in the UK, in Denmark and in Germany, the authors show how members of parliaments cope with this challenge and which strategies they apply to avoid the dilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the power of opposition parliamentary party groups when scrutinising their governments' decision-making concerning European Union issues, an important component in assuring democracy within the emerging multi-level system of governance in the EU. It first sets out the advantages that this provides to the political system, including improving government performance, improved democratic legitimacy, the channelling of disagreement and conflict into parliament, and preparing the opposition to govern. The article then proposes a set of criteria for measuring such power, which focus on the legal framework, institutional structures, and strategic behaviours, which give power to opposition parties when conducting scrutiny. Finally, the article considers these variables in four EU member states to evaluate empirically the power of opposition parties to scrutinise their government's EU decision-making. Because the power of scrutiny over EU matters must be seen in the context of the overall relationship of executive–legislative relations in a country, the four countries have been chosen to represent a country with a majority government (UK), two coalition governments (Germany and the Netherlands), and a minority government (Denmark). This analysis shows that opposition parties in parliaments with minority governments have the greatest power to scrutinise their government, followed by parliaments with coalition governments. Opposition parties in parliaments with majority governments have the least power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present of political elections in Schleswig-Holstein during the years paper is based on a study movements, parties, and the German region of which was carried out 1932 to 1934. Since the people's delegates to legislative bodies are elected for definite areas, the ecological approach to the analysis of election results is so to speak suggested by the very nature of the data. This would not be the case if elections were conducted by occupational or other non-territorial units. Besides, the political behavior of most people is to a large extent conditioned by the opinions and actions of other persons with whom they live in close proximity, particularly in rural society. The student of political movements in pre-Nazi Germany had the advantage that a multiple party system lends itself better than a two party system to this kind of analysis, and furthermore that the system of proportional representation favored the organization of political parties around definite social interest groups, and therefore emphasized the correspondence between social classes and political parties. Consequently the party constellation in any area came very close to an expression of the class structure of that area.

Political rhetoric has important effects on the quality of democracy, but we know very little about what causes variation in the tone of the political debate. We investigate how radical-right success affects the way the remaining politicians discuss political issues. Using an original dictionary, we measure different positive and negative emotions in a newly collected dataset of speeches in German state parliaments. Taking advantage of variation in the timing of elections when radical-right politicians enter these parliaments, we find that politicians of other parties respond to radical-right success by using more positive, instead of negative, emotions. The analyses suggest that this finding may be the result of a strategy by the remaining politicians to distance themselves from radical-right discourse. Our findings highlight how radical-right success can create incentives for other politicians to enforce democratic norms that radical-right politicians breach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Always pressured by electoral deadlines, parliaments are often seen as a weak link in the sustainability politics of representative democracies. Scholars reviewing possible democratic reforms for overcoming parliamentary presentism often reference Germany's Parliamentary Advisory Council for Sustainable Development (PBnE). What does this Council's record reveal about the practicality of representing future generations through parliamentary bodies? We combine a philosophical-historical interpretation of Germany's approach to future-generations issues with an empirical analysis of the PBnE's record. We conclude that while the PBnE has brought greater formal attention to sustainability in the parliamentary process, the idea of enhanced future-regarding representation remains problematic. Counterpoising different sustainability-oriented institutions grounded in diverse forms of democratic legitimacy is a more promising path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers the progressive transformation of the role of the German Parliament (Reichstag) during the First World War. At the beginning, the Parliament occupied a subordinate position and was not directly involved in the decision concerning the declaration of war. This depended on the rapid development of the events, but also on the fact that the German Constitution did not prescribe the previous information of the Parliament and in general did not entail a parliamentary system. In this respect, it is possible to ascertain a development of the functions of the Parliament during the war and also an increasing debate on the extension of its powers. In the course of time, the Parliament intensified the contact with the people and was increasingly concerned with the defence of their rights. Additionally, it began to propose some significant constitutional reforms which aimed at introducing a parliamentary system with a government based on the majority determined by the elections and being directly responsible to the Parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present new data on the legislative capacity (or professionalism) of Germany's national and subnational parliaments including legislator salary, informational expenditures, and counts of committee and plenary sessions. We describe these data and aggregate them into a summary measure modeled after the Squire Index as well as a measure derived from factor analytic decomposition. The internal validity of these measures is assessed in a case study of recent parliamentary reforms in Baden‐Württemberg and the external validity is assessed via comparison to electoral turnover. We conclude with suggestions for future research and hope that our colleagues will both make use of these data to study the causes and consequences of legislative capacity in Germany and also be motivated to collect and disseminate similar data for new contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We model the process of coalition formation in the 16th German Bundestag as a hedonic coalition formation game. In order to induce players' preferences in the game we apply the Shapley value of the simple game describing all winning coalitions in the Bundestag. Using different stability notions for hedonic games we prove that the ``most'' stable government is formed by the Union Parties together with the Social Democratic Party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on data provided by the Forschungsinformations system Sozialwis senschaften (FORIS) and Sozialwissenschaftlichen Literaturinformationssystem (SOLIS) databases for the period between 2001 and 2004 related to parliamentary research in Central and Eastern Europe and in Germany. FORIS contains a survey of social science research projects in the Federal Republic of Germany. It gives detailed information on all work with a theoretical and/or empirical orientation, commissioned research, expert reports, institute projects, self-financed or funded research, habilitations, and dissertations, which scientists are currently working on, planning, or have already completed. SOLIS contains lists of scholarly work published in German, including, monographs, articles, papers in volumes, "grey literature," accompanied by bibliographic information and abstracts. Some of the research projects in the FORIS database are: "Die Abgeordneten im Bundestag und in den Landtagen: Einschätzungen und Meinungen," by Florian Wenzel; and "Politische Karrieren Thüringer Parlamentarier und Parlamentarierinnen," by Katrin Hochheiser.

Does the parliamentary behavior of members of parliament, parliamentary parties, and government correspond with the public's preferences regarding political issues? What conditions support the emergence of congruence between public opinion and public policy? These questions are central concerns of democratic theory. In this paper, they are investigated empirically for the activities in the federal German legislature, the German Bundestag, between 1949 and 1990. For this purpose, 94 time series of public opinion polls have been combined with content analysis of more than 3,000 parliamentary documents (e.g. parliamentary questions, committee reports). If public opinion about a policy matter changes, approximately 60 percent of the respective parliamentary actions are congruent with the direction of opinion change. The congruence between public opinion and public policy is greatest for opinion changes in a conservative direction when the political Status quo is supported. Even more important than the direction of opinion change is the public's majority opinion at the time of parliamentary action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contributes to the growing debate on parliamentary war powers and shows how parliaments matter in shaping both force deployment and force employment. Through original analysis of the Italian and German decision-making on military interventions after the Cold War, the article illustrates how formal and informal constraints shape the opportunity structures faced by executives that are willing to undertake military interventions. Revisiting, and building on, the great deal of research recently emerged on institutional constraints to the use of force, the article details the types of costs – namely, transaction and audience costs – linked to involvement of legislatives in the decision-making and provides empirical support for theories based on parliamentary war powers, adding new dimensions of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses the question of why so many of the world's legislators are lawyers or law graduates. Drawing from previous studies on lawyer-legislators and electoral systems, it develops the argument that 'first-pass-the-post' single-member district electoral systems presume a principal-agent logic of representation and are therefore conducive to political parties selecting representatives with either occupational experience or educational training in the field of law. By contrast, proportional representation (PR) elections presume a microcosm model of representation incentivizing parties to select candidates representing diverse demographic and occupational backgrounds. This conjecture is tested by examining legislator backgrounds in three large parliaments with mixed electoral systems: Germany, Japan, and South Korea. As expected, single-member plurality elections are linked to a greater share of lawyers and law graduates in parliaments compared to those elected via PR even after controlling for several alternative explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses whether and how party politics transform German bicameralism. Based on the policy positions of bicameral legislators, the study computes the win sets, the yolks of each chamber and a Nash solution in order to analyse empirically the effects of party politics on German bicameralism. In comparison to the basic bicameral model, hypotheses on bicameral conflict and policy stability are tested in the case of similar and different party majorities in the two-dimensional policy space of German labour politics. The results show that party politics transform German bicameralism in two ways. Similar majorities collapse bicameral checks-and-balances, while different party majorities come close to the basic bicameral model with high policy stability and conflict between both chambers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although committee assignments have been researched in various parliaments, findings are inconclusive. This article contributes to the debate by analysing the allocations to specialised committees in the Bundestag, a legislature that establishes strong committees despite having strong parliamentary party groups. Studying assignments in this legislature can, therefore, help us to solve the present disjunction between ‘European’ and ‘American’ experiences regarding committee research. The study uses the congressional theories of legislative organisation as heuristic devices but explicitly highlights the strong involvement of parliamentary party groups. The hypotheses are tested with a multiple membership multilevel model across several legislative periods (1990‒2013) and backed up with evidence from 51 interviews with German legislators. The results show that next to constituency demands and the influence of regional factions, there is strong evidence for a reassignment pattern and that a legislator’s occupational background and connections to interest groups matter in the assignment process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Security has often been considered a special kind of politics that presents a particular challenge for liberal democracy, whether due to securitised states of exception or technocratic risk management. This article examines whether and how parliaments can be sites of politicisation, moving security from exceptional and technocratic politics toward more ‘normal’ democratic politics. Moving beyond the narrow focus on decisions over the use of military force, the examination focuses on the ‘hard case’ of parliamentary oversight of intelligence agencies and provides a case study on the German Bundestag. Overall, it finds that a strict divide between security and normal politics is overly simplistic, even when it comes to intelligence. There is evidence for politicisation that reveals patterns of normal politics through an increasingly institutionalised framework as well as public, increasingly controversial debates, including a good deal of partisan politics. However, debates tend to center on institutional and legal issues as well as symbolic skirmishes after specific events of high visibility, while many restrictions are deeply entrenched in parliamentary conventions and attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine whether parties punish politicians who vote against the party line in roll-call votes. Using data of German members of parliament (MPs) over the legislative period 2009-2013, we take into account that the effect of punishment differs along the list of candidates because a candidate is punished more when he loses positions at the threshold of promising list positions. The data set includes the voting behavior of 257 MPs in 218 roll-call votes. Our results do not show that parties account for the voting behavior by punishing politicians who have voted against the party line. Political parties may attract different groups of voters by tolerating politicians who vote according to their own credo. Qualities other than the voting behavior seem to matter to political parties when nominating candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key issues in the on-going overhaul of the global financial system is the structural reform of banking systems. Legislatures in different states, for example, the United States, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, have all taken measures to protect individual depositors' assets against losses from risky bank activities. On 29 January 2014, the European Commission joined the transnational effort by publishing its own proposal on the subject. This contribution shows how the same economic goal is implemented through different approaches by legislatures across the globe. It also analyses how this legal diversity will affect the level playing field in the competition for banking services and the consistency of global financial regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Members of the German parliament may force government to publicly answer questions by issuing minor interpellations (kleine Anfragen). We use 3,608 interpellations from the session 2009-13 that have been signed by authoring and supporting members to construct the social network of support relations among members within the three opposition parties. We find that parties differ markedly in terms of internal structure. While social democrats organize hierarchically, Greens cooperate horizontally. The network for socialist Linke in contrast shows signs of homophily and social segregation. Our approach yields a novel perspective on intraparty politics in parliamentary systems which are notoriously difficult to analyze. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, it has been argued that the scrutiny of European law proposal by national parliaments contributes to speeding up the implementation of EU law. To test this argument, we study the effect of parliamentary scrutiny on Germany's compliance with all directives adopted between 1999 and 2012. The results are mixed: on the one hand, parliamentary scrutiny successfully transfers necessary deliberations from the implementation stage to the policy-making stage. As a consequence, we observe faster implementation of complex and controversial policies. On the other hand, parliamentary scrutiny carries the risk of triggering conflict and of forcing early commitments by actors who might otherwise have remained passive observers. As a consequence, parliamentary scrutiny may even delay implementation of EU law by waking the proverbial ‘sleeping dogs'. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the conditions under which political parties that have dropped below the threshold of legislative representation later re-enter parliament. To do so, it compares two German parties that did not return to the Bundestag and two that did. In light of the ‘lessons' of previous cases in the Federal Republic, the essay considers the prospects of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) in the wake of its 2013 federal election defeat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a survey among German local councillors, the article is discussing the question if German local councils do constitute ‘parliamentary’ bodies. To which extent do local councillors perceive the council as a parliament and themselves as members of a parliament? This question is especially interesting in Germany, where the public largely associates terms like ‘parliament’ with the local council and ‘government’ with the mayor and the executive officers, even if local institutions by law all belong to the executive branch. Despite the institutional setup, I claim that councillors perceive themselves as ‘local MPs’. By using the concept of parliamentarism, this article analyses the self-assessments of nearly 900 German local councillors. The article shows that German local councillors act in a quasi-parliamentarian style by controlling the executive, but take important decisions within the frame of ‘local laws’ and seek to implement their party’s programme. Councillors, representing their respective party in the council, also negotiate coalitions and divide themselves into ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ benches, resembling the setup of a ‘real’ parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article analyses the degree of substantive representation by immigrant-origin MPs in Germany's national and state parliaments. To test the expectation that an immigration background increases the likelihood of engaging with migration-related topics, an analysis is undertaken of all parliamentary questions (PQs) formally asked by immigrant-origin MPs in Germany's national and state parliaments between 1987 and 2009. By controlling for several time-invariant and time-variant factors, the longitudinal analysis confirms that a visible immigration background results in asking more migration-related PQs. While several contextual, party-political and personal (career) factors influence the likelihood of asking such questions in parliament, there is no evidence for a decrease over time. Presence effects are significant and of lasting nature. This means that the parliamentary presence of immigrant-origin MPs with a visible background goes beyond sheer symbolic representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]