Susumu Shikano

Strategic voting under proportional representation: threshold insurance in German Elections

Does proportional representation imply incentives for strategic voting? This article investigates whether adherents of the major German parties voted against their preference in order to increase the chance of a majority coalition between their favourite party and the pre-electorally declared junior coalition partner. Focusing exclusively on the PR vote, the authors test whether strategic voting is guided by expectations with regard to the coalition formation stage. To that end they use a two-step estimation procedure to simultaneously predict (in-)complete party preferences and sincere and strategic voting in a random utility framework. Their results show that voters’ preferences, rather than mapping directly into party choice, are affected by their expectations on small parties’ re-entry chances.

Coalition-formation as a result of policy and office motivations in the german federal states : an empirical estimate of the weighting parameters of both motivations

In this article, we analyze the policy and office motivations of parties in coalition-formation processes at the German federal-state level. We utilize a model developed by Sened that considers both motivations simultaneously and introduces a method by which to estimate its key parameters using data of German state-level coalition-formations.

The Dimensionality of German Federal States' Policy Preferences in the Bundesrat

Academic discussions have increasingly attested to the fact that state governments in the German Bundesrat represent partisan interests more than state-specific interests. This view seems to be confirmed by recent developments in which opposition parties exploit the Bundesrat to block the projects of the federal government. This contrasts with the behaviour of state governments in the earlier years of the Federal Republic, which were characterised to a greater extent by more heterogeneous interests. Using roll-call vote data in the Bundesrat, this article investigates to what extent preferences of the state governments are heterogeneous. More concretely, item response models are utilised to examine the dimensionality of the policy preference constellation. The results show that, besides the partisan left–right dimension, there was another dimension at work in the 1950s. The analysis of the roll-call data after German reunification shows, by contrast, the strong growth of relevance of the first partisan dimension.

Modellgestützte Rekonstruktion und Simulation des Ergebnisses der Bundestagswahl 2005

Dieser Beitrag zielt darauf ab, anhand von theoretischen Modellen und empirischen Daten das Ergebnis der Bundestagswahl am 18. September 2005 zu rekonstruieren. Der Sinn dieser Rekonstruktion liegt erstens darin, das Zustandekommen des Wahlergebnisses durch ein theoretisches Modell zu erklaren. Hier wird ein Mikro-Modell der politischen Akteure verwendet, sodass ein Wahlergebnis als ein Phanomen auf der Aggregatebene auf die individuelle Ebene zuruckgefuhrt werden kann. Zudem ermoglicht die Rekonstruktion Simulationen mit verschiedenen Kombinationen der Parameter. So konnen kontrafaktische Wahlergebnisse in hypothetischen Situationen erzeugt werden.

GMO-free regions in Europe : an analysis of diffusion patterns

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been a controversial issue in the European Union (EU). A growing number of member states and regions within the member states oppose the EU’s agro-biotechnology policy, resulting in a complex multi-level structure of policy-making. This study is interested in the regional opposition to GMOs and scrutinises the determinants of membership in the European Network of GMO-free Regions. In terms of theory, this study builds on the literature of policy diffusion. For the analytical purpose, we distinguish among four diffusion mechanisms: learning from earlier adopters, economic competition among proximate regions, imitation of economically powerful regions and deviation from national law. Our research questions are the following: How has membership developed since the foundation of the network? Which mechanisms explain the diffusion patterns observed? The empirical findings show that membership in the network has grown substantially between 2003 and 2014, which supports the general expectation that there is a diffusion of GMO-free regions. Yet, most new member regions are located in the same member states as the regions that founded the network. In other words, what is observed is intra-country diffusion rather than inter-country diffusion. The empirical findings provide support for the importance of learning from earlier adopters for the growing of the European Network of GMO-free Regions.

Deliberative Abilities and Influence in a Transnational Deliberative Poll (EuroPolis)

This article investigates the deliberative abilities of ordinary citizens in the context of ‘EuroPolis’, a transnational deliberative poll. Drawing upon a philosophically grounded instrument, an updated version of the Discourse Quality Index (DQI), it explores how capable European citizens are of meeting deliberative ideals; whether socio-economic, cultural and psychological biases affect the ability to deliberate; and whether opinion change results from the exchange of arguments. On the positive side, EuroPolis shows that the ideal deliberator scoring high on all deliberative standards does actually exist, and that participants change their opinions more often when rational justification is used in the discussions. On the negative side, deliberative abilities are unequally distributed: in particular, working-class members are less likely to contribute to a high standard of deliberation.

Koalitionsbildung nach der Bundestagswahl 2013: Parteien im Spannungsfeld zwischen Ämter-, Politik- und Stimmenmotivation

Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht das Zusammenspiel verschiedener Motivationstypen von Parteien bei der Koalitionsbildung nach der Bundestagswahl 2013. Wir erweitern hierfur bisherige formale Theorien, die Parteien als Amter- und politikmotiviert konzeptualisieren, um eine Komponente der Stimmenmotivation. Ergebnisse sind, dass nicht die Grose Koalition aus CDU/CSU und SPD, die tatsAchlich gebildet wurde, sondern ein rot-rot-grunes Bundnis diejenige Koalition ist, bei der alle an ihr beteiligten Parteien ihre Motivationen am besten erfullt sehen sollten. Richtet man den Blick auf mogliche zukunftige Konstellationen, in denen die Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) oder die Piratenpartei eine Rolle spielen konnten, so besitzt die AfD das grundsAtzliche Potenzial, die FDP als Koalitionspartner der CDU/CSU abzulosen. Die Piraten sollten Interesse an einer gemeinsamen Regierung mit SPD und Grunen besitzen, nicht aber an einer Koalition mit der Union.

When Does the Second-Digit Benford’s Law-Test Signal an Election Fraud?: Facts or Misleading Test Results

Summary Detecting election fraud with a simple statistical method and minimal information makes the application of Benford’s Law quite promising for a wide range of researchers. Whilst its specific form, the Second-Digit Benford’s Law (2BL)-test, is increasingly applied to fraud suspected elections, concerns about the validity of its test results have been raised. One important caveat of this kind of research is that the 2BL-test has been applied mostly to fraud suspected elections. Therefore, this article will apply the test to the 2009 German Federal Parliamentary Election against which no serious allegation of fraud has been raised. Surprisingly, the test results indicate that there should be electoral fraud in a number of constituencies. These counter intuitive results might be due to the naive application of the 2BL-test which is based on the conventional χ2 distribution. If we use an alternative distribution based on simulated election data, the 2BL-test indicates no significant deviation. Using the simulated election data, we also identified under which circumstances the naive application of the 2BL-test is inappropriate. Accordingly, constituencies with homogeneous precincts and a specific range of vote counts tend to have a higher value for the 2BL statistic.

Die Analyse von Wählerpräferenzen mit Rank Ordered Logit

„Wenn am nachsten Sonntag Bundestagswahl ware, welche Partei wurden Sie wahlen?“ - Die so genannte Wahlabsicht ist eine der am haufigsten erhobenen und am meisten studierten Variablen in der empirischen Wahlforschung. Zur statistischen Analyse wird dabei zunehmend auf Verfahren wie das Multinomial Logit1 Modell zuruckgegriffen, das in der Wahlforschung inzwischen weit verbreitet ist und auch zunehmend Einzug in die Methodenveranstaltungen politikwissenschaftlicher Fakultaten halt. Eine andere, mit der Wahlabsicht eng verwandte Variable, die ebenfalls in vielen Wahlstudien enthalten ist findet dagegen deutlich weniger Beachtung. Die Rede ist von den Parteipraferenzen der Wahler, also welche Partei sie am meisten praferieren, am zweitmeisten, usw. Der Grund fur die geringe Aufmerksamkeit mag zum einen darin liegen, dass das Forschungsinteresse gegenuber der Wahlentscheidung generell groser ist als gegenuber Wahlerpraferenzen, zum anderen bisher auch an einem Mangel an entsprechenden Analyseverfahren, die - ahnlich dem Multinomial Logit Modell in der Analyse der Wahlabsicht - es erlauben wurden, Praferenzordnungen von Wahlern einer multivariaten statistischen Analyse zuzufuhren. Im Rahmen dieses Aufsatzes mochten wir ein solches Analyseverfahren - das so genannte Rank Ordered Logit Modell (ROL) - vorstellen, mit dem der herkommliche Multinomial Logit Ansatz von der Analyse der Wahlabsicht auf die Analyse ordinaler Parteipraferenzen ubertragen werden kann. Es ermoglicht damit eine Form der Analyse die in der Wahlforschung bisher kaum genutzt wurde.

Never Say Never Again: Legislative Failure in German Bicameralism

Bills adopted by the Bundestag hardly ever fail. Even under divided majorities in the two chambers legislative failure is a rare phenomenon. This fact has long been accepted as evidence against the popular complaint about legislative stalemate in the German bicameral system. However, it is not at all clear why we should expect to see bills fail in the first place: Rational political actors should anticipate a veto and refrain from initiating bills which are doomed to failure. The question then is why some bills do fail. Building on recent advances in Congressional research, we address this question both theoretically and empirically. We discuss two possible explanations for bill failure both rooted in the rational choice approach: incomplete information and mixed motivations. From each we deduce hypotheses about the conditions under which bills are likely to fail. We test these hypotheses using multilevel logistic regression and a novel dataset which covers legislative decision-making over almost 30 years.