Thorsten Faas

To defect or not to defect? National, institutional and party group pressures on MEPs and their consequences for party group cohesion in the European Parliament

This study analyzes party group cohesion and patterns of defections of national party delegations from party group lines in the European Parliament (EP), using a total of 2,582 roll call votes. The study confirms previous findings according to which party groups in the EP show (surprisingly) high levels of cohesion. Nevertheless, it reveals the circumstances under which Members of the EP (MEPs) and their national delegations are more likely to defect, using the candidate selection process, the electoral system and relationships between MEPs and their home parties as explanatory variables. Assuming that MEPs have three different goals (re-election, office and policy), and want above all to secure re-election, one can expect that those MEPs whose chances of re-election are more dependent on national parties than others are more willing to vote against the party group line if a conflict between party group and national party emerges. Empirically, this is confirmed.

Information - Wahrnehmung - Emotion

„Democracy requires an active citizenry because it is through discussion, popular interest, and involvement in politics that societal goals should be defined and carried out in a democracy“, so hat es Dalton (1996: 40) formuliert und weiter pointiert zugespitzt: „Democracy should be a celebration of an involved public”. Man konnte hinzufugen, dass diese Offentlichkeit nicht nur eine involvierte, sondern auch eine informierte sein sollte. Zwar mit viel Enthusiasmus, aber basierend auf faktisch falschen Grundlagen – so sollte Demokratie wohl auch nicht funktionieren.

‘Miniature Campaigns’ in Comparison: The German Televised Debates, 2002–09

Given that US-style televised debates were held for the third time in a row in a German federal election campaign, it seems fair to say that they have become institutionalized features of German campaigns. Although a number of studies have analyzed (single) German debates, comparative work covering the full set of debates is still lacking. Within this paper, our aim is to reveal patterns and trends in a) debate exposure, b) the evaluation of the candidates’ debate performances and c) debate effects. To do so, we analyse a pooled data set for the 2002, 2005 and 2009 debates. We find consistent evidence that cognitive as well as partisan mobilization increases the probability of watching debates. Concerning the impact of debates, we find that debate exposure has a mobilizing effect – specially among people less interested in politics. In addition, we find a considerable impact of debates on party choice – with the effects reflecting patterns of ‘reinforcement’ as well as ‘conversion’. The largest debate effects can be observed for independent voters. Given these results, televised debates are not only institutionalized features of German campaigns, but also powerful and hence possibly decisive ones.

The German Federal Election of 2009: Sprouting Coalitions, Drooping Social Democrats

In order to understand the 2009 German Federal Election, one must first look back. Five years ago, in 2005, election day had ended with a bang: what had seemed certain from the early days of the 2005 campaign onwards, and what had still seemed highly likely in the final days of the campaign, namely that the then government consisting of the social democratic SPD and the Greens would be replaced by a coalition of the Christian democratic CDU/CSU and the liberal FDP, did not materialise. The CDU/CSU – expecting around 40 per cent of the votes given the final poll results – ended up with a meagre 35.2 per cent, and the Social Democrats trailed just marginally behind (34.2 per cent). As he had done in 1998 and 2002, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had again proven his capabilities as a campaigner. Having started far behind, he was able to bring his party back almost level with the Christian Democrats in the course of an intensely run and heated campaign (see Schmitt-Beck and Faas 2006). As a follow-up surprise, none of the established coalition alliances – Social Democrats and Greens on the one hand, Christian Democrats and Liberals on the other – were able to form a majority coalition in Parliament. Germany had voted for ‘deadlock’ (Pulzer 2006) with a malfunctioning centre-left bloc (of Social Democrats, Greens and Leftist Party) able but not willing to form a coalition; a too small centre-right bloc willing but not able to form a coalition, and a German party system not yet ready for other (experimental) sets of three or more parties forming a coalition. A Grand Coalition of Christian and Social Democrats emerged as the only viable alternative in the wake of the 2005 election, and this is indeed what happened when the dust had settled. Chancellor Schröder stepped down,

Wahrnehmung und Wirkungen politischer Meinungsumfragen. Eine Exploration zur Bundestagswahl 2005.

Politische Meinungsumfragen rucken im Vorfeld von Bundestagswahlen immer starker ins Zentrum der Medienaufmerksamkeit (Brettschneider 2000). Besondere Beachtung wird dabei den Versuchen der Meinungsforschungsinstitute zuteil, unter der Bezeichnung „Projektion“ oder schlicht „Sonntagsfrage“ Stimmenverteilungen fur hypothetische Bundestagswahlen zu Terminen zu ermitteln, die vor der tatsachlichen Wahl liegen. Die Bundestagswahl 2005 bildete keine Ausnahme von diesem langfristigen Trend.

Aber jetzt?! Politische Internetnutzung in den Bundestagswahlkämpfen 2005 und 2009

Das Internet hat sich in kurzester Zeit von einem Nischen- zu einem Massenphanomen entwickelt. Nach den Daten der ARD/ZDF-Online-Studie hat sich die Zahl der Internetnutzer in Deutschland zwischen 1997 und 2009 von 4,1 auf 43,5 Millionen mehr als verzehnfacht (van Eimeren & Frees, 2010, S. 335). Die Internetnutzung in all ihren Facetten gehort zu den standard operating procedures unseres Alltags – fur die mit dem Internet aufgewachsenen Digital Natives, aber auch fur die wachsende Zahl von Silver Surfers.

When Methodology Interferes With Substance

For campaigners, and also attendant researchers, the advent of the Internet has challenged established ways of doing their respective campaign business. Practitioners, used to running local and media campaigns, can nowadays also resort to elements of web campaigning, while electoral researchers, used to running election studies based on personal or telephone interviews, can now employ online surveys to do their business. However, e-campaigning and online polling suffer from severe deficiencies. Based on online and offline surveys conducted in the run-up to the 2002 German election, we show two things. First, online surveys yield biased results; second, e-campaigning reaches only a tiny fraction of the electorate, which is due to not only the imperfect dispersion of the Internet but also a lack of interest in political web sites among voters. Taken together, the Internet is—at least for time being—confined to adding supplementary elements to the established procedures of campaigning and polling.

The German Federal Election of 2013: Merkel’s Triumph, the Disappearance of the Liberal Party, and Yet Another Grand Coalition

The 2009 German federal election was a puzzling one – stuck somewhere between boredom and extremes, as the title of one publication puts it Rattinger et al. (2011; see also Faas 2010): 23 per cent of the vote for the Social Democrats meant a historic low for this venerable party; a turnout of 70 per cent also meant a post-war low for Germany, while the liberal FDP received a record high of almost 15 per cent. Greens and the Left Party also fared well. Germany’s Volksparteien – the Christian and the Social Democrats – clearly had seen better days than election day 2009. At the same time, there were standard aspects to it: after four years of grand coalition government of Christian and Social Democrats – still regarded as an exceptional case in German coalition politics – the 2009 election allowed for a return to a standard coalition based on political camps. Having a majority of seats in the Bundestag, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals agreed to form a coalition and Angela Merkel was re-elected as the German chancellor for her second term of office. Guido Westerwelle, party chairman of the Liberal party, became vicechancellor and foreign minister. Given their extraordinary result, the Liberals entered the coalition with great confidence – probably too great. The coalition talks were brought to an end rather hastily. Of crucial importance for the Liberals was that they were unable to push through tax reductions, their central electoral pledge. In sharp contrast to the triumph on election day, the start for the Liberals in the newly formed coalition was disastrous and they became a party in constant turmoil. Even replacing Guido Westerwelle as party chairman and vice-chancellor in May 2011 was of no help. The Liberals were an

Debattenwahrnehmung und Kandidatenorientierung

Zusammenfassung. Bei der Bundestagswahl 2002 wurden erstmals Fernsehduelle nach US-amerikanischem Vorbild durchgefuhrt. Mit Hilfe von experimentell erhobenen Daten geht der vorliegende Beitrag folgenden Fragen nach: Wie wird die Debattenleistung von Schroder und Stoiber bewertet? Welche Faktoren sind fur die Wahrnehmung der Debattenleistung verantwortlich? Welche Rolle spielt die wahrgenommene Debattenleistung fur die Bewertung der beiden Kandidaten, und welche Rolle kommt hier non-verbalen Verhaltensmustern zu? Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Auftritte beider Kontrahenten vorwiegend positiv beurteilt wurden. Die Wahrnehmung der Debattenleistung hangt dabei vor allem von bereits vor den Duellen existierenden Einstellungen, aber auch von den non-verbalen Signalen ab, die die beiden Kandidaten aussenden. Die perzipierte Debattenleistung wiederum beeinflusst die Einstellung zu den Kandidaten - und hier vor allem die Bewertung des politischen Gegners - erheblich.

Schröder gegen Stoiber: Wahrnehmung, Verarbeitung und Wirkung der Fernsehdebatten im Bundestagswahlkampf 2002

Die beiden Fernsehdebatten zwischen Gerhard Schroder und Edmund Stoiber im Vorfeld der Bundestagswahl 2002 waren, das belegen sowohl das Zuschauer- als auch das Medieninteresse, das Ereignis des zuruckliegenden Wahlkampfes. Schon fruh im Wahljahr stand fest, dass es zu direkten Aufeinandertreffen des Kanzlers mit seinem (Haupt-) Herausforderer vor laufenden Kameras kommen wurde. In der Folge war das Thema nicht mehr von der Wahlkampf-Agenda wegzudenken, ganz im Gegenteil: Je naher der Wahltag ruckte, desto dominierender wurde es (Brettschneider 2002). Gegen Ende schien es fast so, als seien die entscheidenden Fragen des Wahlkampfs weniger jene nach der Zukunft der sozialen Sicherungssysteme, nach Moglichkeiten zur Senkung der Arbeitslosigkeit oder nach einem moglichen Einsatz der Bundeswehr im Irak, sondern jene nach dem Abschneiden der beiden Kontrahenten in den von den Medien schnell zu „Duellen“ hochstilisierten Fernsehdebatten (zur Kritik an den Fernsehduellen vgl. z. B. Donsbach 2002).