Die Bündnisgrünen in der babylonischen Gefangenschaft der SPD?

Poguntke, Thomas

doi:10.1007/978-3-322-93356-0_4

Cited by 49 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The Greens found their seats on the opposition benches to the left of the Social Democrats, which had lost power in 1982 due to yet another coalition change of the Liberals who had teamed up again with the Christian Democrats. Since then, the Greens have turned into a constant of German electoral politics, although until recently tied in a symbiotic relationship to the Social Democrats-relying on them as the only feasible coalition partner and competing with them for the same reservoir of "new left" voters of the post-materialist middle class (Poguntke 1999;Falter and Klein 2003). Their emergence changed the character of party competition toward a model of alternating governments between two camps of one dominant and one minor party each-a leftist camp of SPD and Greens and a "bourgeois" camp of CDU/CSU and FDP.…”

Section: To 2005: Diminishing Party System Stability and Fragmentatio...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Changing German Voter

2022

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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.

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Section: To 2005: Diminishing Party System Stability and Fragmentatio...mentioning

confidence: 99%