How important are political parties in motivating and disciplining elected officials? Using a difference-in-discontinuity design, we study how shocks to incumbents're-election probabilities affect legislative behavior in a setting where parties fully control candidate selection. We find that...

Individual members of Congress can have different policy preferences from the party leadership or special interest groups (SIGs), and the latter two may pressure members to shift their positions. To study this tension, we develop and estimate a multi-stage election model that incorporates party...

Wirtschaftspolitik in einer sozialen Marktwirtschaft möchte Wohlstand schaffen und verteilen. Dies zeigt sich in den Wahl- und Regierungsprogrammen auf Bundesebene seit 2002, allerdings mit sehr unterschiedlichen Akzenten. Zur Analyse wird deshalb die relative Häufigkeit der Begriffe...

The last few decades witnessed a dramatic change in public opinion towards gay people. This paper studies the hypothesis that the AIDS epidemic was a shock that changed the incentive to "come out" and that the ensuing process of mobilization and endogenous political process led to cultural...

The present paper draws the attention of political scientists towards the participation of the European Parliament in EU legislation making on migration and in the EU management of the migration crisis of the last seven years. The paper aims at knowing whether and, in the positive case, why the...

I analyze the link between partisan alignment of local politicians and the incidence of political corruption, using novel hand-collected data on local political corruption in Ghana. In line with political ambition theory, I hypothesize that local politicians aligned with the national government...

Die Einkommensteuerpolitik spielt in den Wahlprogrammen eine relevante Rolle. Darin unterscheidet sich der Bundestagswahlkampf 2021 nicht von vergangenen Wahlkämpfen. Allerdings ist es in den vergangenen 15 Jahren trotz Ankündigungen zu keiner grundlegenden Reform der Einkommensteuer gekommen....

Die Künstliche Intelligenz (KI) wird in Deutschland als entscheidende Schlüsseltechnologie gesehen (BMWi, 2019). Bereits 2018 erklärte Bundeskanzlerin Merkel in ihrem Video-Podcast, dass Deutschland bei KI führend sein muss, „wenn wir Wachstum und damit auch neue Arbeitsplätze und...

Vier Parteien - Die Linke, SPD, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen und FDP - haben bis Ende April 2021 den Entwurf ihres Programms zur Bundestagswahl am 26. September veröffentlicht. Wie klar und überzeugend vermitteln Bundestagsparteien ihre Vorstellungen? Die digital- und medienpolitischen Aussagen der...

Diese Studie untersucht die Programme zur Bundestagswahl 2021 im Hinblick auf Maßnahmen, die die Rolle von privatem Eigentum in unserer Gesellschaft tangieren. Untersuchungsgegenstand sind die Wahlprogramme aller gegenwärtig im deutschen Bundestag vertretenen Parteien.

Der Mittelstand bildet mit nahezu 3,5 Millionen Unternehmen die Basis der deutschen Wirt-schaftsstärke. Unternehmensgründungen sind für die ständige Erneuerung der mittelständi-schen Unternehmenslandschaft unerlässlich; innovative Start-ups bringen wichtige Innovatio-nen auf den Markt, die...

I analyze the link between partisan alignment of local politicians and the incidence of political corruption, using novel hand-collected data on local political corruption in Ghana. In line with political ambition theory, I hypothesize that local politicians aligned with the national government...

Die Partei Bündnis 90/Die Grünen hat eine umfangreiche Agenda arbeitsmarkt- und sozialpolitischer Forderungen erarbeitet. Diese reichen von Maßnahmen mit geringer Reichweite wie dem weitgehenden Verbot der Arbeit auf Abruf bis hin zu Maßnahmen, die einem kompletten Systemwechsel gleichkommen...

Do politicians tend to follow a strategy of ambiguity in their policy positions or a strategy of reputational development to reduce uncertainty about where they stand? Ambiguity could allow a legislator to avoid alienating constituents and to play rival interests off against each other to...

This piece builds on my work from 2019, when I explored how different aspects of American political life in the Trump era were being rebranded in the book Political Brands. Branding in politics is very similar to commercial branding: repeat a message ad infinitum until the intended audience...

This paper provides a simple model to explain effect of political alignment between different tiers of government on policy choices and election outcomes. We derive precise predictions that, as long as voters attribute most of the credit for providing public goods to the local government: (i)...

This paper studies the effects on electoral competition of political parties relying on monetary donations and volunteer labor for their electioneering activities. It also examines whether a recorded decline in party activism increases special-interest influence on party policy platforms....

Polities differ in the extent to which political parties can pre-commit to carry out promised policy actions if they take power. Commitment problems may arise due to a divergence between the ex ante incentives facing national parties that seek to capture control of the legislature and the ex...

Ever since the spectacular boom and bust cycle of the Spanish real estate industry, endemic corruption at the local level has become a widely recognized problem in the national public discourse. In an effort to expose an under-explored political determinant, this paper investigates the effect of...

This paper draws on Laclau’s theory of discourse, hegemony, and populism to analyse competing forms of populism in the Czech Republic within the discursive context of ‘post-November transformation’ as well as in relation to hegemonic struggles over the construction of social order. It is...

This article begins with a theoretical tension. Radical democracy, in the joint work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, can be understood as a joint articulation of a post-foundational ontology of contingency and a politics of autonomy of ‘democratic struggles’ within a hegemonic bloc as...

Western European Populist Radical Right Parties (PRRPs) have addressed the dispersed socio-economic status of their electorates by blurring their economic positioning. This contribution analyses the rise of the German PRRP Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) between 2013 and 2017 and the role of...

Following the Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, independent expenditures have grown dramatically both in terms of raw dollars and as a percentage of spending in elections. A large and growing portion comes from political nonprofits—so called “dark money”...

In many developing countries, local elections are increasingly dominated by political parties with a local or regional scope. This paper examines whether the geographic scope of a ruling party (national vs. sub-national) affects local policy outcomes. This party dimension can be important due to...

Democratic representation is constrained by the alternatives available to voters. In this paper, we develop a methodology to gauge the extent to which the "supply side" of politics hinders voter welfare. Using rich data on thousands of candidates in three Brazilian legislative elections, we...

Die Hartz-Gesetze führten trotz der Verabschiedung durch eine breite parlamentarische Mehrheit von Anfang an zu heftigen Kontroversen über deren Wirkungen und Nebenwirkungen, die bis heute andauern. Mittels der Dissertation wird beantwortet, welche Veränderungen die jeweiligen...

To what extent is U.S. state tax policy affected by corporate political contributions? The 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling provides an exogenous shock to corporate campaign spending, allowing corporations to spend on elections in 23 states which...

In most national elections, voters face a key choice between continuity and change. Electoral turnovers occur when the incumbent candidate or party fails to win reelection. To understand how turnovers affect national outcomes, we study the universe of presidential and parliamentary elections...

The last few decades witnessed a dramatic change in public opinion towards gay people. This paper studies the hypothesis that the AIDS epidemic was a shock that changed the incentive to "come out" and that the ensuing process of mobilization and endogenous political process led to cultural...

The present paper draws the attention of political scientists towards the participation of the European Parliament in EU legislation making on migration and in the EU management of the migration crisis of the last seven years. The paper aims at knowing whether and, in the positive case, why the...

Recent developments in information and communication technologies allow candidates for office to engage in sophisticated messaging strategies to influence voter choice. We consider how access to different technologies influence the choice of policy platforms by candidates. We find that when...

A recent paper by Madden used concentration indices to examine the bases of party support in Ireland in the 2011 election. This note updates this work to incorporate the 2016 election using the latest wave of ESS data. The results show that in terms of the bases of party supports many of the...