Local traditions of voting behaviour and party structure in Lower Saxony (Oldenburg/Ostfriesland)

Der Verfasser untersucht den Zusammenhang von traditionellem Wahlverhalten und Parteienstruktur in den Bezirken Aurich und Oldenburg im nordwestlichen Niedersachsen. Im Mittelpunkt des Interesses steht besonders die Frage, warum in protestantischen und bäuerlichen Gebieten die traditionellen Wähler liberaler Parteien in der Endphase der Weimarer Republik zur NSDAP überwechselten, um dann von 1947 bis Ende der sechziger Jahre wiederum liberal zu wählen. Er kommt zu dem Ergebnis, daß das untersuchte Datenmaterial signifikante Unterschiede im Zusammenwirken von Sozialstruktur und Wahlverhalten in städtischen und ländlichen Gebieten ersichtlich macht, wobei insbesondere für größere, weiterentwickelte Regionen das Zusammenwirken von lokalen und regionalen Besonderheiten, regionalen politischen Traditionen und lokalen Kandidaten von Bedeutung ist. (RS)'Ever since German electoral politics attracted enough money and manpower the survey researchers have taken over almost the entire fields. Social scientists applying political ecology or other techniques of historical electoral research, e.g. von Schuckmann, Sahner and Troitzsch, have been a scattered minority. The data available for statistical analysis are election results and census data collected by the various statistical offices. Broken down to administrative units at the local level (urban and rural districts) the data demonstrate significant differences of social structure and political behaviour. Processing of machine readable data allows for larger regions, more sophisticated techniques and reveals contextual factors most commonly disregarded by survey researchers: sub-national cleavages, regional political traditions and local political personnel. Subject of the study presented here is voting behaviour in the northwestern part of Lower Saxony, the former administrative districts of Aurich and Oldenburg, from the 19th century up to the present.' (author's abstract

Bibliography on Political Finance, 1970-1999

Bibliographie über politische Finanzen, 1970-199

New Parties in Old Democracies: The Funding of Green and Populist Parties in Belgium and Germany. A Preliminary Stocktaking

status: publishe

"The Partisan Usage of Parliamentary Salaries: Informal Party Practices Compared"

types: ArticleIt is widely acknowledged that political parties in European democracies have become increasingly dependent on state resources, most notably direct state funding. Yet cross-national studies on parties' usage of state resources that are not earmarked for partisan purposes, which require the assessment of informal, intra-organisational practices, are still rare. This article looks at one such practice across 33 parties in five European democracies: namely the 'taxing' of national MPs' salaries. Under this practice, candidates who enter elected office on a party ticket are obliged regularly to donate a fixed share of their public salaries to party coffers. The empirical analysis shows that the presence of a taxing rule is more likely in parties with a strong extra-parliamentary organisation, while a leftist ideology facilitates the collection of high salary shares from parliamentarians. Moreover, where party entanglement with the state is particularly pronounced, the partisan usage of parliamentary salaries is easier irrespective of their organisational dispositions. Finally, while in unitary systems national headquarters are usually able to monopolise control over national MPs' contributions, in federal systems regional party executives are able to insist on their share of these payments. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.Marie Curie Early Career Fellowshi