Bestimmungsgründe der Parteienvielfalt in den deutschen Bundesländern

Flick, Martina; Vatter, Adrian

doi:10.1007/s11615-007-0006-9

Cited by 10 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Other authors examine the effect of regional cleavages on sub-national or local party systems: For the Swiss cantons see Ladner (2004) and Vatter (2002Vatter ( , 2003; for municipal elections in Belgium see Geys (2006); and for the autonomous communities in Spain see Lago Penas (2004). Flick and Vatter (2007) see regional societal cleavages as one explanation for varying party fragmentation across the 16 German Länder parliaments. Hearl et al (1996) study regional voting patterns in european union member states.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cleavage Structures and Voter Alignments within Nations

2009

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Despite its general popularity the cleavage theory has only rarely been used to explain regional electoral outcome. In this paper we examine whether a region′s social structure and its electoral results are systematically linked. to analyse the political preferences of an entire regional electorate in a single step, electoral results are translated into a left-right position for each region using Gross and Sigelmann′s concept of the ideological centre of gravity. We then analyse whether the left-right differences between the regions can be traced back to the socio-structural composition of regional populations. We apply this approach to the results of the 1998, 2002, and 2005 German federal elections in all of the 439 counties. Our results suggest that the church-state cleavage and the postmaterialism cleavage shape electoral outcomes in western regions considerably, but that the impact of the capital-labour divide has mostly vanished. Contrarily, eastern electorates seem largely guided by a centre-periphery cleavage that is rooted in a leftist mentality, but not much else.Zusammenfassung: Trotz ihrer Popularität wurde die Cleavagetheorie bisher nur sehr selten zur Erklärung regionaler Wahlergebnisse herangezogen. In dieser Studie wird untersucht, inwiefern die sozio-strukturellen Merkmale und die Wahlergebnisse in einer Region miteinander in Beziehung stehen. Um die politischen Präferenzen gesamter regionaler Wählerschaften in einem einzigen analytischen Schritt erfassen zu können, werden die Wahlergebnisse in eine rechts-links-Position im Sinne von Gross und Sigelmanns Konzept des ideologischen Gravitätszentrums übersetzt. In der Folge wird überprüft, ob die beobachteten rechts-links-Unterschiede auf die sozio-strukturelle Zusammensetzung einer Region zurückgeführt werden können. Dieser Ansatz wird auf die Ergebnisse der Bundestagswahlen der Jahre 1998Jahre , 2002Jahre und 2005 in allen 439 Landkreisen und kreisfreien Städten angewendet. Die Resultate unserer Untersuchung zeigen, dass der StaatKirche-Cleavage und der Postmaterialismus-Cleavage regionale Wahlergebnisse in Westdeutschland maßgeblich beeinflussen, wohingegen der Arbeit-Kapital-Gegensatz an Bindungswirkung eingebüßt hat. In den ostdeutschen Regionen scheinen die Wählerschaften hauptsächlich durch einen Zentrums-Peripherie-Konflikt geprägt, der sich aus einer linksorientierten Mentalität speist, während die übrigen westdeutschen Erklärungsmuster hier versagen.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cleavage Structures and Voter Alignments within Nations

2009

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“…The effect of both sociological and institutional factors on the fragmentation of party systems is generally accepted and widely documented (Amorim Neto and Cox ; Duverger ; Clark and Golder ; Cox ; Flick and Vatter ; Geys ; Ordeshook and Shvetsova ; Rae ; Taagepera and Shugart ). With regard to institutional factors, a distinction is generally made between the psychological and mechanical effect: Whereas the mechanical effect refers to electoral institutions causing smaller parties to receive less seats than they are entitled to based on vote distribution, the psychological effect refers to the anticipation of this effect by voters and by party elites.…”

Section: Expectations and Theoretical Assumptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral Institutions, Social Diversity and Fragmentation of Party Systems: A Reassessment

Witzig

Vatter

2017

Swiss Political Sci Review

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The article examines the determinants of party fragmentation based on electoral district data from the Swiss cantons (2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015). In contrast to previous studies, three different dependent variables are taken into account: firstly, the raw number of parties, secondly, the effective number of parties based on vote shares and, thirdly, the effective number of legislative parties. On all three levels, the exclusion magnitude proves to be the most important factor. Compared to this, other institutional variables contribute little explanatory power. However, apparentments are relevant in the first stage of our analysis as they increase the raw number of parties standing for election. In terms of sociological factors, we only find limited relevance. Denominational and linguistic heterogeneity do not have any impact. This can be explained by the fact that linguistic heterogeneity is only weakly pronounced at district level. The finding emphasises the importance of district-based data for the analysis of party system fragmentation in general. 1 We would like to thank Alexandra Z€ urcher for her assistance during the data collection and Maja Harris for linguistic support. Moreover, we are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable remarks.

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Die Parteiensysteme der Bundesländer

Niedermayer

2013

Handbuch Parteienforschung

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Bestimmungsgründe der Parteienvielfalt in den deutschen Bundesländern

Cited by 10 publications

References 36 publications

Cleavage Structures and Voter Alignments within Nations

Cleavage Structures and Voter Alignments within Nations

Electoral Institutions, Social Diversity and Fragmentation of Party Systems: A Reassessment

Die Parteiensysteme der Bundesländer

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