Unequal Geographic Representation in a Mixed-Member Electoral System: Evidence from the German Bundestag

Abstract

This paper demonstrates a systematic geographic bias in the German mixedmember electoral system. This bias concerns the composition of the individual party groups, and, by extension, the composition of the parliament: The Bundestag is much more urban than it would be under equal geographic representation. The bias is caused by the distribution of list seats across districts: since parties have incentives to give the best list positions to candidates from their strongest districts, regions where the vote is more fragmented systematically get more representatives. Since the vote is more fragmented in urban districts, these districts have more MPs than rural districts. The paper empirically analyses Bundestag elections between 1994 and 2017 and demonstrates that geographic disproportionality has increased strongly with the growing fragmentation of the German party system. This affects substantive representation in terms of leadership positions and voting behaviour in the Bundestag. Unequal representation in the German political system therefore also has a geographic component.

Civic associations, populism, and (un-)civic behavior: evidence from Germany

“…These include turnout as a standard measure for civicness, log total population, GDP per capita, population above the age of 60, gender ratio, percentage of people with a college degree, employment shares in sectors that hardly allow for work-from-home such as hospitality, transport, and manufacturing, a dummy for East Germany, and lagged number of Covid cases, a measure that featured prominently in German media coverage as "case incidence." For urbanization, we follow Haffert (2021) and include a variety of indices: population density, percentage of people below the age of 35, percentage of students, and university-to-population ratio. To further alleviate the potential confounding effects of urbanization, we split our sample into two, based on (1) the distinction between free cities ("Kreisfreie Stadt" or "Stadtkreis") and rural counties ("Kreis" or "Landkreis") and ( 2) the presence of universities (either above or below the mean university-population ratio).…”