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Emmanuel Macrons Wahl 2017 führte zum "Zusammenbruch" des französischen Parteiensystems. Fünf Jahre später, vor der nächsten Wahl, stellt sich die Frage, was vom "Trümmerfeld" noch übrig ist. Der Beitrag geht auf die Gründe für den Niedergang der traditionellen Parteien ein und beleuchtet vor diesem Hintergrund ihre Strategien im Hinblick auf die Kandidatenkür vor der Präsidentschaftswahl 2022. Während auf der Rechten ein Dreikampf zwischen rechten und rechtsextremen Kandidaten die Frage nach der Abgrenzung nach rechts außen aufwirft, sorgt auf der Linken eine Basisbewegung für Aufsehen, die die Kandidaten gegen ihren Willen zur Vorwahl stellte. Im Fazit zeigt sich, dass nach der Niederlage 2017 weder eine Konsolidierung, noch eine Erneuerung der traditionellen Parteien stattgefunden hat. Die ehemaligen Präsidentenparteien (Parti socialiste und Les Républicains) kämpfen um ihre Existenz und blicken deshalb schon über die Präsidentschaftswahl hinaus auf die Parlamentswahl, die über die Höhe der zukünftigen Parteienfinanzierung entscheiden wird., L'élection d’Emmanuel Macron en 2017 a conduit à l'effondrement des partis français. Cinq ans plus tard, à l'approche des prochaines élec- tions, la question se pose de savoir si le paysage politique ressemble toujours à un "champ de ruines". L'article se penche sur les raisons du déclin des partis traditionnels et, dans ce contexte, met en lumière leurs stratégies en vue de la désignation des candidats avant l'élection prési- dentielle de 2022. Alors qu'à droite, une lutte féroce oppose trois candidats de droite et d’extrême droite, à gauche, une initiative citoyenne a présenté des candidats pour une primaire contre leur gré. En conclusion, il apparaît qu'après la défaite de 2017, il n'y a eu ni consolidation, ni renouvellement des partis traditionnels. Les anciens partis présidentiels (Parti socialiste et Les Républicains) luttent pour leur existence et se tournent donc déjà, au-delà de l'élection présidentielle, vers les élections législatives qui décideront du niveau de financement public des partis à l’avenir.

Over the past half century, the behavior of German voters has changed profoundly - at first rather gradually but during the last decade at accelerated speed. Electoral decision-making has become much more volatile, rendering election outcomes less predictable. Party system fragmentation intensified sharply. The success of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) put an end to Germany's exceptionality as one of the few European countries without a strong right-wing populist party. Utilizing a wide range of data compiled by the German Longitudinal Election Study, the book examines changing voters' behavior in the context of changing parties, campaigns, and media during the period of its hitherto most dramatically increased fluidity at the 2009, 2013, and 2017 federal elections. Guided by the notions of realignment and dealignment, the study addresses three questions: How did the turbulences that increasingly characterize German electoral politics come about? How did they in turn condition voters' decision-making? How were voters' attitudes and choices affected by situational factors that pertained to the specifics of particular elections? The book demonstrates how traditional cleavages lost their grip on voters and a new socio-cultural line of conflict became the dominant axis of party competition. A series of major crises, but also programmatic shifts of the established parties promoted this development. It led to a segmentation of the party system that pits the right-wing populist AfD against the traditional parties. The book also demonstrates the relevance of coalition preferences, candidate images as well as media and campaign effects for voters' attitudes, beliefs, and preferences.

In May 2018 the Malaysian governing coalition Pakatan Harapan (PH) lost in national elections for the first time since independence. But the subsequent reform process came to a sudden halt in February 2020. During transitions, unpredictability and risks for political actors are higher, and political conditions are extremely volatile. Multiparty coalitions such as PH have trouble sustaining the cohesion that was instrumental in their electoral victory. The highly polarized environment and the differing strategic calculations of PH coalition partners after the elections prompted the early downfall of the government. At the same time, the opposition, weakened shortly after the transitional elections, increased its cohesiveness and mobilized its supporters against the government in an environment of deep ethnoreligious cleavages. This paper traces the reform successes and failures of the PH government as well as the reconsolidation and strengthening of the new opposition, up to the emergence of the new Perikatan Nasional government.

Over the past half century, the behavior of German voters has changed profoundly. After a long period of stability, elections have dramatically altered their character - at first rather gradually, but during the past decade at an accelerated speed. Voters' decision-making has become much more volatile, rendering election outcomes less predictable. The long-term process of party system fragmentation that had already been going on for a while intensified sharply. A particularly conspicuous outcome of this period of turbulent electoral politics was the termination of Germany's exceptionality as one of the few European countries without a strong right-wing populist party. The chapter traces this development in detail. It identifies three distinctive phases of party system development: 1949 to 1976, 1980 to 2005, and 2009 to 2017. The topoi of realignment and dealignment are evoked as key concepts for interpreting the trends that have become increasingly visible since the second phase.

This chapter asks how electoral competition changed from 2013 to 2017 in East and West Germany. Following Sartori's understanding of party systems as systems of interactions resulting from inter-party competition, it focuses on the content-related properties of the German party system. Combining data from the GLES 2013 and 2017 voter and candidate surveys, it investigates, first, the extent of electoral competition in terms of overlapping electoral support of party pairs and, second, how the establishment of the AfD changed the substantial structure underlying electoral competition in East and West Germany. Findings suggest that electoral competition in Germany is best described as three-dimensional. Whereas regional differences result from different voter preferences regarding policy issues, temporal differences are essentially the result of the changing relevance of the socio-economic and socio-cultural issue dimensions but also a newly emerged populist-pluralist divide.

The theory and concept of multi-level governance (MLG) is a fairly recent one, emerging from the deepening integration of the European Union in the early 1990s and the development of free trade agreements around the world. MLG enlarges the traditional approaches, namely those of neo-institutionalism and multinational federalism, by offering a better understanding of the role of the state, regions and provinces. The book analyses the changes that have taken place as well as those that might take place in the future. The concept of multilevel governance has been more in use in the recent literature because of its non-normative aspect but also because there are more actors involved in this process that goes beyond traditional central-regional-local government relationships. There is a growing interest in the academic literature on federalism in multilevel-multinational analyses and this book wants to enlarge the discussion on this issue. The academic literature has largely ignored how central states have become in a way a world in which more actors are playing a decisive role both internally and internationally. This are also a number of the federalist scholars who try to refine the role of the state in international affairs by bringing in such concept as neo-institutionalism. To the contrary some authors have preferred to use the concept of multinational governance in many countries where federalist views are in the process of being redefined. This is the case in most federal or quasi-federal states such as Australia, Japan, India, Canada, USA and all European countries - more specifically Spain, UK, and Germany. Therefore, his book is rooted in a policy approach and one key scholarly element of this book is to fill the gap between policies-politics.

This paper compares the evolution of critical characteristics of the party systems in Eastern and Western Germany since unification. While the institutionalisation hypothesis implies that the party system in Eastern Germany should adjust towards its Western German counterpart, the ongoing dealignment suggests a loosening of party-voter-linkages and, ultimately, non-institutionalisation in Eastern Germany and party system de-institutionalisation in Western Germany. However, both hypotheses predict a convergence. Against the backdrop of persisting regional differences in party strengths, a third hypothesis assumes that Eastern and Western Germany still have two distinct party systems thirty years after reunification. Using election results and survey data since the 1990s, we inspect the development of five indicators of party systems - volatility, vote-switching, electoral availability, fragmentation, and differences in vote shares - in light of the hypotheses. There are three main results: First, most of the indicators point to party system institutionalisation in Eastern Germany and convergence to Western Germany in the 1990s. Second, for the last 20 years or so, the indicators point to parallel developments of dealignment and partial party system de-institutionalisation. Third, regarding the specific parties and their vote shares, there has been no convergence between Eastern and Western Germany.

This paper explores a major road to substantive representation in democracies, by clarifying whether demands of rich and poor citizens are taken up in the electoral platforms of political parties. Doing so constitutes a substantial broadening and deepening of our understanding of substantive representation – broadening the countries, issue-areas and years that form the empirical basis for judging whether democracies manifest unequal representation; and deepening the process of representation by clarifying a key pathway connecting societal demands to policy outcomes. The paper hypothesises that party systems in general will respond more strongly to wealthy than to poor segments of a polity. It also hypothesises that left parties will more faithfully represent poorer and less significantly represent richer citizens than do right parties. We find substantial support for these expectations in a new dataset that combines multi-country, multi-issue-area, multi-wave survey data with data on party platforms for 39 democracies.

Dissatisfaction with two-party politics is at an all-time high in the US. As extreme polarization and minority rule persist, a possibility of an electoral reform becomes increasingly more likely. This editor's introduction discusses the ranked choice voting (RCV) as an alternative to the current single-member geographic districts with winner-take-all plurality elections in the US. The articles for this thematic issue critically evaluate whether RCV lives up to its promise in improving democracy in the US. Like any rule or institutional change, it has benefits and drawbacks. The empirical and historical research presented here focuses on the implementation and use of RCV in the US compared to other countries. This thematic issue offers new insights into the promise and perils of RCV as a way to aggregate votes in elections that ensure that the winning candidate receives a majority of the votes cast.

Political and social relations in South Africa are eroding. This is the result of structural changes and concurrent developments that mutually reinforce each other. Any hopes of generating tourism revenue in the months of November 2021 to February 2022 have been dashed by the international travel restrictions put in place since the discovery of the Covid variant Omicron. Moreover, tensions within the governing African National Congress (ANC) limit President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ability to act. Nevertheless, progress is slowly being made on reforms. The party system has also become increasingly differentiated since the local elections in early November. Germany and the EU can support positive developments through well-designed and appropriate assistance, but they should always keep a number of (especially socio­economic) factors in mind. (author's abstract)

The German federal election of 2021 reshuffled Germany's party-political hierarchy, but left the six-party system intact. For the first time since 2002, the SPD narrowly overtook the CDU/CSU to become the party with the largest vote share. The Greens and the FDP also gained votes while the CDU/CSU and the Left party suffered high losses and the AfD minor losses. Crucially, party system continuity coexists with severe challenges for German policy makers, namely regional and global insecurity, decline in the country's infrastructure and social coherence, as well as the highly divisive management of the Covid crisis. While the electorate still focusses mostly on social protection and economic security, it is unclear whether Germany's political class can deliver on such expectations in a multi-crisis context. Crucially, technocratic updating at the expense of liberal democracy and constitutional order will worsen rather than improve the current situation.