Thomas Bräuninger

Accession and Reform of the European Union

This study examines how the institutional provisions of the Nice Treaty and the constitutional reform of the European Union (EU) will affect agricultural decision-making in the enlarged EU. Although the agricultural sector is a core EU policy domain, we have little knowledge about the effects of institutional reform following the accession of 10 relatively small and poor countries, each having a large primary sector. Based on an input–output taxation model, we identify the positions of old and new member states in the twodimensional space of EU agricultural politics. This allows us to investigate whether and how Council decision-making will change if the Nice Treaty’s provisions for qualified majority voting are replaced by those of the draft constitution of 2004. Our analysis shows that the constitution is an advance providing for more policy change but it falls behind the Laeken proposal, which would have effectively reformed EU agricultural decision-making.

Parteienwettbewerb in den deutschen Bundesländern

Unterscheidet sich die nordrhein-westfalische CDU eines Jurgen Ruttgers programmatisch von der hessischen Union unter Fuhrung von Roland Koch? Steht die SPD im Saarland weiter links von der Mitte als die Sozialdemokraten im benachbarten Rheinland-Pfalz? Wenn ja, warum ist das der Fall? Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die bundeslandsspezifischen Eigenheiten des Parteienwettbewerbs anhand einer Analyse aller zwischen 1990 und 2010 verfassten Landtagswahlprogramme. Dies geschieht vor dem Hintergrund der historischen Entwicklung der Parteiensysteme in den Landern einerseits und auf Grundlage theoretischer Modelle andererseits. Die Ergebnisse zeichnen ein differenziertes Bild des Parteienwettbewerbs im deutschen Mehrebenensystem. Sie zeigen die Unterschiede in den programmatischen Positionen der Parteien in den verschiedenen Politikfeldern auf, die ihre Ursachen in der Sozialstruktur der jeweiligen Wahlerschaft, aber auch in taktischen Bestrebungen der Parteien bei Landtagswahlen haben. Die Eigenstandigkeit des regionalen Parteienwettbewerbs im Vergleich zum bundespolitischen zeigt sich schlieslich in der Bedeutung der inhaltlichen Ausrichtungen der Landesparteien fur die Regierungsbildung in den Bundeslandern.

Intra-Party Preference Heterogeneity and Faction Membership in the 15th German Bundestag: A Computational Text Analysis of Parliamentary Speeches

In a broad range of research in comparative politics, political parties are conceptualised as unitary actors with consistent preferences. We depart from this sometimes accurate, at other times overly strong assumption by studying patterns of intra-party heterogeneity of preferences within parliamentary parties in the German Bundestag from 2002–05. For this purpose, we use the Wordscores method, a form of computational text analysis, to estimate policy positions of 453 individual legislators based on plenary speeches. We then study the link between intra-party faction membership and expressed policy positions. We find that there is a limited, but consistent effect of intra-party factionalism in the German Bundestag. According to random effects ANOVA, faction membership determines about 3 per cent of the variance of positions on economic policy in the present study.

Challenges for Estimating Policy Preferences: Announcing an Open Access Archive of Political Documents

We provide a comparative perspective on the contributions of the special issue with regard to their applied methods and findings. In addition, we discuss problems that arise when using ‘wrong’ or at least ‘incorrect’ versions of election manifestos by presenting replications of estimated policy positions of German parties. We show that the latter can result in biased estimates that may affect the outcome of theoretical models. On the basis of those findings, we present the idea of the open access archive polidoc.net to build up a common database for political texts.

When Simple Voting Doesn t Work : Multicameral Systems for the Representation and Aggregation of Interests in International Organizations

This article analyses the origins and consequences of multicameral representation and voting in international organizations. It is argued that the existence of visible and durable conflicts in an issue area can make standard procedures such as unicameral majority voting ineffective with respect to the functioning of the regime. Applying spatial models of strategic decision making, it is asserted that multicameralism is more likely to be effective than unicameralism if chambers consist of key groups with distinct interests. Empirical evidence is provided by studying the multicameral voting rule in the Council of the International Seabed Authority (ISA). I compare likely decision-making outcomes under unicameral and multicameral voting rules from 1996 to 2002 and find that multicameral outcomes are more likely to be stable and supported by those actors critical for the effective functioning of the regime.

Decisiveness and Inclusiveness: Two Aspects of the Intergovernmental Choice of European Voting Rules

When studying the constitutional choice of European voting rules, most power index analyses concentrate on member states’ relative decisiveness for forming winning coalitions in the Council of Ministers. These studies have two shortcomings: (a) They ignore the distribution of relative power between the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, as defined by the multi-cameral European legislative procedures. (b) They disregard the absolute notion of power, which is dependent on the inclusion of member states in winning coalitions under various voting rules. In this article we present our approach on member states’ constitutional choice of European voting rules with regard to the two notions of power: actors’ relative decisiveness and their absolute inclusiveness in decision making. We present an index to measure inclusiveness and apply our concept to the European multi-cameral legislature. On the basis of our study, we present a reasoned account of motives behind member states’ recent institutional reforms of legislative procedures.

Stability in Spatial Voting Games with Restricted Preference Maximizing

Spatial models of simple majority rule voting suggest that stable decisions are not likely to exist under normal circumstances. Yet this instability result stands in contrast to the stability observed in experiments. This article examines the effect of relaxing the assumption that voting is costless by requiring a proposal to be a finite distance closer to a member’s ideal point than the pending proposal before it is regarded as attractive. Using the concept of the epsilon-core the article estimates the minimal decision costs that guarantee stable outcomes. It shows that the minimal costs are equal to the minimal finagle radius (Wuffle et al., 1989) and that the epsilon-core contains the finagle point which is close to the center of the yolk. While the analytical model establishes that the minimal costs are smaller than the yolk radius, computational simulations of majority voting by committees of size 3 to 101 suggest that this is a weak upper bound, only, as the ratio of minimal costs to the yolk radius usually is small and decreases as committee size approaches infinity.

Responsivität und strategische Adaption im Parteienwettbewerb in den deutschen Bundesländern

Der Beitrag untersucht am Beispiel der deutschen Landespaneien die Dynamik der programmatischen Entwicklung von Paneien. Es werden zwei Hypothesen abgeleitet und empirisch getestet. Nach der Responsivitatshypothese sollten Parteien auf eine Veranderung der Wahlemachfrage nach Politik reagieren, so dass beispielsweise eine Verschiebung der Verteilung der Wahlerpraferenzen nach links mit einer Linksverschiebung der Parteipositionen einher geht. Nach der Adaptionshypothese ist zu erwarten, dass der Parteienwettbewerb in einem Mehrpaneiensystem bei nicht-vollstandiger Information Parteien dazu zwingt, auf die programmatische Positionierung ihrer Mitbewerber strategisch zu reagieren. Datengrundlage sind die Wahlprogramme von Landesparteien in elf Bundeslandern seit 1990 sowie Politikbarometer-Umfragen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen erstens, dass ein responshier Zusammenhang zwischen Wahlernachfrage und Parteipositionierung besteht. Zweitens gibt es Hinweise darauf, dass Parteien eine sogenannte Predator-Strategie anwenden, also versuchen, sich dem Sieger der letzten Wahl programmatisch anzunahern.

Let’s Just Agree to Disagree: Dispute Resolution Mechanisms in Coalition Agreements

Scholars of coalition politics have increasingly begun to focus on conflict within coalitions. Here we examine the role of coalition agreements in managing intracoalitional conflict. We argue that there is a trade-off between making policy agreements at the coalition’s formation (e.g., by making very detailed policy platforms) and postponing the issue’s resolution by creating procedures for settling policy disputes. We argue that the trade-off is increasingly likely to be resolved in favor of relying on a formal dispute resolution mechanism when coalitions are ideologically heterogeneous and the coalition parties differ in size. We test our theory using data from the German Länder between 1990 and 2013. These data allow us to isolate the effects of the bargaining situation and ideology while holding the institutional context constant. The empirical results support our main argument: When intracoalition conflict is high, parties write shorter coalition contracts but are more likely to adopt procedures for conflict resolution.

Politikwechsel im Föderalismus

Die Chancen fur einen Politikwechsel im deutschen Foderalismus werden als eher gering eingestuft. Anlas zu dieser Skepsis gibt die Diagnose einer Politikverflechtung, die den kooperativen Foderalismus der Bundesrepublik charakterisieren soll. Laut Scharpf (1994: 25) fuhrt die horizontale Politikverflechtung in eine pathologische Verflechtungsfalle von Vetospielern, da die Regierungen der unteren Landerebene nicht in der Lage sind, auf der oberen Bundesebene „einstimmige“ oder „quasi-einstimmige“ Entscheidungen zu treffen. Vergleichbar skeptisch fallt die Bewertung der vertikalen Politikverflechtung aus, die im Zweikammersystem von Bundestag und Bundesrat organisiert ist. Als Ursache fur Entscheidungsblockaden zwischen Bundestag und Bundesrat nennen Lehmbruch (1998: 181) und Scharpf (1994: 69) die Inkongruenz von Parteienwettbewerb und Foderalismus. Besonders in Zeiten unterschiedlicher Parteimehrheiten soll die kooperative Ausrichtung des Foderalismus, dessen Arena eine Zusammenarbeit zwischen Bundestag und Bundesrat verlangt, von der kompetitiven Parteienarena uberlagert werden. Nach Lehmbruchs (1998: 193) Auffassung mus daher eine losere Koppelung beider Arenen gefunden werden, wenn die Reform- und Innovationsfahigkeit des politischen Systems gesteigert werden soll.