Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Voting – Germany'

The author discusses the issue whether the internet and other electronic sources should be used for elections. Online-elections can make the electoral process not only less complex but also cheaper, thus the analysis faster and more reliable. The lower costs could, in turn, lead to a new impulse on direct-democracy-instruments. Comparing the USA, Great Britain, Germany and Switzerland the article provides information about national strategies, discourses and problems, and shows the different political and cultural settings.

Thesis (M.A. in Security Studies (Europe, Eurasia))--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2010.
Thesis Advisor(s): Siegel, Scott ; Shore, Zachary. "March 2010." Author(s) subject terms: Germany, Sweden, European Union, voting rights, franchise, citizenship, immigration, immigrant, migration, Nationalism. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-60). Also available in print.

This paper investigates how exposure to extreme weather affects public support for climate policies. I use temperature data from the extreme heatwaves during the summers of 2018 and 2019 and examine whether temperature anomalies affected the results of five German state elections held in the autumn of these years. Using the vote share change of the Green Party as a measure of public support for climate policies, I do not find a general baseline effect of extreme temperatures. When considering possible heterogeneities however, I find that there is a positive effect of temperatures in electoral districts with more employed in the agricultural sector and in electoral districts with more informed voters. The estimated interaction effects are large compared to the mean vote share of the Green Party and the estimates obtained for other parties.

Since the 1980s a growing number of populist parties have made a breakthrough in European party systems. Examples of these are the Belgian Vlaams Belang (VB), the Lijst Pim Fortuyn (LPF) in the Netherlands or the German Die Linke (DL). All of these parties can considered to be populist because they share a thin centred ideology “that considers society ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people” (Mudde, 2004: 543). This thin centred ideology can be combined with other full ideologies such as the radical right but also democratic socialism. The main objective of this study is to explain why people vote for populist parties. Such a question is difficult to answer, however, because populism is mostly attached to other ideologies. To address this problem, this study draws on a comparative research design. By studying the electorates of a wide range of different populist parties, it is disentangled what is exactly the populist element, rather than elements related to the host ideology, that drives voters towards these parties.

The study begins with a careful investigation of all parties in Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany by means of both qualitative and quantitative methods to explore which of them could be labelled populist. Support was found for at least the following cases: LPF, the Belgian Lijst Dedecker (LDD), the Dutch Partij Voor de Vrijheid (PVV), VB, the Dutch Socialistische Partij (SP) and DL. In a next step, the voters of these parties were analyzed by means of election survey data (Dutch Parliamentary Election Study, Partirep Survey and German Longitudinal Election Study).

The main finding of is that dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy and a desire for more decision making through referendums are important and unique drivers for populist voting in general. On the demand side it is argued that a process of cartelization, i.e. increased reliance of parties on state subventions, more cooperation between government and opposition, and ideological moderation, combined with the growth of critical citizens has led to the questioning of political authority. On the supply side, an increasing group of well-organized populist parties have begun challenging mainstream parties by depicting them as a group of self-serving elites depriving the ordinary people of their sovereignty. Moreover, populist parties claim to restore the voice of the people through the introduction of direct democracy. Accordingly, a growing group of voters who share these concerns are attracted to the populist appeal.

Another important finding of this study is that populist parties generally attract social groups that feel themselves deprived. In Eastern Germany of the 1990s these were the ‘losers of unification’, i.e. highly educated civil servants who had lost the social prestige that they enjoyed during the heydays of the DDR. Yet in contemporary ‘diploma democracies’ it appears that populist parties, regardless of their host ideology, are increasingly attracting the ‘losers of globalization’, which are the lower educated and lower social classes. While populism has mostly been considered a threat for democracy, the ability of populist parties to integrate excluded social groups into the political system certainly deserves notice.
Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Europe is trying to switch away from fossil fuels towards renewable energy. Bioenergy is well positioned to play a large role in this. However, bioenergy as a share of total energy used differs substantially between European countries. What causes these differences and what the barriers are to bioenergy implementation is researched in this thesis for seven EU countries: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK. The systemic barriers to bioenergy implementation are categorised in the five categories, infrastructure, market problems, interactions, institutions, and capabilities. A literature review gives the first insight into the barriers, which is then followed by ananalysis of current policy in the seven countries. Afterwards, industry specialists are interviewed from five of the seven countries. The interviews mainly took place by email. However, one was over the phone. A semi-structured approach was used in the interviews. Lastly, voting behaviour of MEPs and the influence of the oil industry are analysed. This was done by using the Forbes most valuable companies list and ranking the biggest European oil and gas companies. These were then compared to the voting behaviour by members of the EU parliament of the countries where the companies are domiciled. The results show no systemic barriers for Denmark and Sweden. In every country a different set of problems was in the way of bioenergy. Negative public opinion may start playing an increasing role in the implementation of bioenergy in western European countries, such as the Netherlands and Germany. Currently, the UK and Belgium have policy barriers to bioenergy implementation, while France’s bioenergy sector struggles with infrastructure, market and capability problems. Germany also suffers from market problems. The oil industry does not seem to influence the behaviour of politicians significantly concerning bioenergy. Politicians from countries with large oil industry did not vote morenegatively on bioenergy directives in the EU parliament than those from countries without a large oil industry. Moreover, the public opinion towards bioenergy can have large effects on the implementation, as was observed in the Netherlands. Where this negative public opinion on bioenergy comes from is not clear. No final conclusion can be drawn on what causes the difference in bioenergy adoption in the seven countries. More research is needed into what influences the public opinion in these countries concerning bioenergy.
Europa försöker göra en omställning från fossila bränslen till förnybar energi. Bioenergi är väl positionerat för att spela en viktig roll i detta. Bioenergi är en mindre intermittent energikälla än vind och solenergi och kan därmed komplettera dessa. Bioenergi som andel av den totala energianvändningen skiljer sig emellertid väsentligt mellan europeiska länder. Vad som orsakar dessa skillnader och vilka hinder som finns för implementering av bioenergi undersöks i denna rapport för sju EU-länder: Belgien, Danmark, Frankrike, Tyskland, Nederländerna, Sverige och Storbritannien. Hindren på systemnivå för implementering av bioenergi kategoriseras i de fem kategorierna, infrastruktur, marknadsproblem, interaktioner, institutioner och kapacitet. En litteraturöversikt ger den första insikten om hinder, som sedan följs av en utläggning gällande den nuvarande lagstiftningen i de sju länderna. Efter det intervjuas branschspecialister från fem av de sju länderna. Slutligen analyseras röstbeteende i Europaparlamentet och oljeindustrins inflytande. Resultaten visar att oljebranschen inte verkar påverka politikernas beteende i betydande utsträckning beträffande bioenergi. Politiker från länder med stor oljeindustri röstade inte mer negativt gällande bioenergidirektiv i EU-parlamentet än de från länder utan stor oljebransch. Däremot kan den allmänna opinionen mot bioenergi få stora effekter på genomförandet, vilket observerades i Nederländerna. Ingen slutsats kan dras gällande varför utbredningen av bioenergi skiljer sig åt mellan de sju länderna. I varje land fanns det en rad olika hinder i vägen för implementering av bioenergi. Sverige och Danmark har inga systemproblem för implementering av bioenergi. Om den allmänna opinionen är negativt inställd till bioenergi kan det börja spela en större roll för utbredningen av bioenergi i västeuropeiska länder, som Nederländerna och Tyskland.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine religion on the western frontier as expressed through votive inscriptions with a view to understanding the context of religious practice in these areas. Specifically, it was hoped to discover the extent to which religion reflected societal structures and inter-personal relationships. The sites chosen were Stockstadt, Mogontiacum (Mainz) and Nida-Heddernheim in Germany and Eboracum (York), Isca (Caerleon) and Deva (Chester) in Britain. These sites represent, respectively, a front-line fort, a legionary and provincial capital, a garrison town which reverted to quasi-civilian status and the three British legionary centres. Selection was dictated by the need to avoid local anomalies, the wish to examine both legionary and auxiliary sites and the basic requirements of a statistically valid number of inscriptions at each location. The relative poverty of epigraphic evidence at British auxiliary forts, in comparison with Germany, eliminated them from consideration as primary data. However, the conclusions drawn from the selected sites may justifiably be applied to any other fort; that at Magnis (Carvoran) is taken as an example in the Conclusion. Analysis of the inscriptions demonstrates that religious practice as expressed in epigraphic form illustrates a number of the features by which frontier society was defined. They are, firstly, evidence of the importance of rank, status and wealth. On a more complex conceptual level they reveal the existence of associative networks of social power (as described by Mann, in The Sources of Social Power); implied or explicit matrices of influence linking groups and individuals with common interests or positions. They also illustrate a dichotomy between groups which is analogous to Tonnies' concept of Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft ('community and association').

This thesis presents a new approach to the long-standing question of how electoral rules influence the behaviour of legislators. It begins with the argument that fresh empirical advances can be made by moving beyond the pervasive but rigid assumption that all legislators want to be re-elected and, by extension, that every incumbent values this goal to the same degree. Rather, I propose that individual Members of Parliament (MPs) vary in the extent to which they personally desire or depend upon re-election. Following the principles of a difference-in-differences design, this observation allows me to devise a theoretical framework capable of testing whether MPs' vote-seeking behaviour differs within parliaments in a way that varies predictably across countries. Specifically, I propose that in electoral systems where party-centric behaviour increases re-election chances, MPs particularly invested in the goal of re-election should cater to the party to an even greater extent than their colleagues. Conversely, in systems where a personal vote can generate electoral gains, MPs most ambitious for re-election should engage in this type of vote-winning strategy to the greatest extent. I test this prediction across the UK House of Commons and the German Bundestag, and within Germany's mixed-member system. Newly-collected biographical data on over 1700 MPs is used to conduct the first systematic MP-level operationalisation of re-election ambition based on legislators' career backgrounds. Career politicians are thereby identified as those most ambitious for re-election. Using voting behaviour from 1.8 million vote choices in legislative roll-calls as a proxy for the degree to which an MP caters to the party or to his or her personal reputation, the quantitative multilevel analysis reveals strong evidence for the proposed behavioural pattern. The contribution made by this study is two-fold. First, it uncovers the interaction between electoral rules and individual re-election ambition as a new explanation for MP-level variation in legislative behaviour. Second, its research design overcomes shortcomings in previous empirical tests for the existing theory on how electoral rules impact MP behaviour (e.g. Carey and Shugart 1995), producing more robust evidence in support of this influential framework.

Defence date: 11 June 2013
Examining Board: Professor Alexander H. Trechsel, EUI (Supervisor); Professor Martin Kohli, EUI; Professor R. Alan Walks, University of Toronto; Professor Richard Rose FBA, University of Stratchclyde.
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
Is there such a thing as suburban political preference in Western Europe, and if so, how is this related to political cleavages associated with geographically bound interests? What is the role of the classic urban-rural cleavage today? To answer these questions, the dissertation combines approaches from urban geography and political science to explain how the political preferences between core city and suburban voters differ in a cross-national comparative perspective. Suburbanisation has radically changed the European landscape in the 20th century: A significant share of the population now lives in places that could be defined as suburbs instead of inner cities, small towns and villages, or the countryside. However, when it comes to questions concerning the built environment and the political sphere, a large part of political research only distinguishes between urban and rural, even though metropolitan regions now include a multitude of different places with their own characteristics and associated political beliefs and interests. Urban-suburban divergences in political preference are examined considering the close relationship between the built environment and patterns of daily life. The dissertation incorporates the idea of the social construction of spaces into an explanation of suburban electoral preferences. The study demonstrates that urban-suburban divergences are substantially based on diverging patterns of daily use of spaces, as well as to different lifestyles within the middle class. Two key aspects are relevant: the family pattern and the use of public services. First, family patterns are clearly related to the building density of the place of residence. It is postulated that in less densely constructed and populated municipalities, the organisation of daily life is easier in a breadwinner-housekeeper pattern, which is in turn linked to conservative political preferences. Second, urban inhabitants tend to rely more on public services than suburbanites, while right-wing conservative parties tend to favour the limitation of public services. The hypotheses are examined in three country case studies (Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland) that begin with an overview of the national histories of suburbanisation, showing how suburbanisation and metropolitanisation are related to political discourses and policy-making. In a second step, statistical analyses take into account different aspects of suburban and urban inhabitants' daily life routine related to the use public services as well as to the family pattern. The findings of the statistical analyses are interpreted in relation to the history of suburbanisation and evidence that political preferences are indeed related to daily life and the place of residence. The analyses mostly result in a suburban tendency towards the conservative side of the political spectrum as compared to inner city inhabitants, and show that suburban political preference patterns are closer to rural than to core city patterns. In a further context, the study aims to broaden the understanding of political cleavages in European democracies, particularly the urban-rural cleavage, highlighting the relationship between one of the largest changes in the European landscape over the 20th century and the inhabitants' political preferences.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
國家發展研究所
101
“Electoral Accountability” and “Economic Voting” have observed power for the success or failure of an important assessment-oriented, also as voters according to the ruler''s judgment whether to give continued support, or punished in the next election, that is, when the past economic performance was good (or bad), the voters will vote in the next election, and support for (or against) the ruling party, and preliminary comparison of the performance and results of the election to the economic capacity of the GDP economic growth rate and unemployment rate, in order to observe the economic voting and electoral accountability exists. This thesis tried to make quantitative and qualitative research analysis to observe the 16th and 17th federal elections as well as results of the federal chancellor elections. Besides, the state elections as “Mid-Term Elections” within last two years of 2011 till 2013, especially “The Post 311”, have also been perceived to discuss the election results of the latest public opinion trends and to make comprehensive descriptions as well.

This thesis concerns the support for the AfD in the federal states Bremen, Saxony-Anhalt, and Baden-Württemberg. In particular, the goal is to explain the support for the AfD among the eligible voters of Bremen, Saxony-Anhalt, and Baden-Württemberg at the most recently elections held in Bremen on 10 May 2015 and in Baden-Württemberg and Saxony-Anhalt on 13 March 2016. This is a disciplined, interpretive case study, which uses the existing models of voting behaviour to explain the voting for the AfD in Bremen, Saxony-Anhalt, and Baden- Württemberg. It employs a sociological model of voting behaviour and a model of rational choice. The goal is to determine whether the support for the AfD in the three selected federal states can be explained using these models of voting behaviour, and if so, which model of voting behaviour best explains the support for the AfD. First, the thesis presents the models of voting behaviour that are used in the study for analysis of the support for the AfD. The next portion of the thesis deals with the party Alternative for Germany. The section of the thesis that follows is devoted to the actual analysis of support for the AfD, first in Baden- Württemberg and then in the federal states Saxony-Anhalt and Bremen. The answers to the research question are presented at the...