Most efforts to detect the consequences of divided government in German federalism by analyzing legislative statistics have been unsuccessful. Therefore, there is still much debate in Germany about the gridlock potential of divided government, as there is in the United States. Using a...

Efforts to verify legislative gridlock in German federalism by analyzing legislative statistics have been largely unsuccessful. For instance, contrary to popular opinion, the complete failure of a government initiative due to the veto of an opposition-dominated Bundesrat is actually quite a rare...

Studies of the welfare state usually try to find out which factors have contributed to its ascendancy since the end of the nineteenth century and which factors explain the various approaches different countries took in providing a new social insurance to cover new social risks in industrialized...

Voting behavior in elections to the European Parliament seems to follow a regular pattern, as many EP-election studies have found: Parties in government at the national level tend to lose vote shares in EP-elections as compared to the last domestic electoral contest; small and ideologically more...

Das Gesundheitsstrukturgesetz von 1992 hat gleich mehrfach langjährige gesundheitspolitische Reformblockaden durchbrochen. In diesem Aufsatz wird nach den Gründen für diesen überraschenden Reformerfolg gefragt in einem Politiksektor, der sich bislang aufgrund seiner institutionellen Gestalt...

Why junior ministers? What function do they serve? Two explanations dominate the literature. Both focus on the role of junior ministers in coalition formation and coalition management. One approach sees junior ministers as instruments for controlling policy, the other as a means to solve or ease...