Parteienwettbewerb im Bundestag nach dem Einzug der AfD und während der Corona-Krise: eine Analyse namentlicher Abstimmungen

Abstract

While party competition is generally dominated by the conflict between government and opposition parties, the analysis finds interesting variations between opposition parties . Over the last few electoral periods, a clear convergence in the voting behavior of the Greens and the Left Party can be observed, not between the Greens and the liberal FDP . There is a dis- tinct separation between the extreme-right populist AfD and all other parties during the most recent electoral period, as all AfD motions were unanimously rejected by all other parties . Second, the request of roll call votes mirrors the respective parties’ topical agenda . In particular, the AfD requested roll calls on their core issues (especially migration) and on topics that ranked high in popular salience (especially in the context of the Covid-19 pan- demic) . Moreover, the data indicate that a cross-party consensus on policy reaction to Cov- id-19 during the initial phase of the pandemic quickly gave way to typical patterns of gov- ernment-opposition conflict while also indicating some intra-party conflicts, especially within the Christian Democrats .