Research on mixed electoral systems provides inconclusive findings on the question whether members of parliament (MPs) elected in single-member districts are more likely to vote against the party ...line than MPs elected via closed party lists. This article rejects both the hypothesis of a general “mandate divide” and the competing claim that contamination effects completely wash out behavioral differences. Instead, we argue that electoral incentives to defect are stronger for a specific type of MP—those who run only in a district and are electorally insecure. Statistical analyses of roll call votes in the German Bundestag covering more than 60 years support this “conditional mandate divide” against alternative hypotheses. These findings suggest a more nuanced view on electoral system effects in mixed electoral systems and highlight the importance of electoral competition for incentivizing MPs to side with district demands if those conflict with the party line.
Why do women fail to rise in parties, especially youth parties? This analysis shows that female party members' preferences regarding the purpose of a committee, networking and the election rule in ...party organisations differ from male party members' which is likely a reason why women face challenges to rise in parties. This article investigates for the first time these gender based differences in preferences simultaneously by conducting a survey experiment with youth party members. Respondents (n > 1200) were asked if they would run for a seat in a decision-making committee of their youth party. In order to analyse which youth party members opt for which opportunities, the purpose of these committees, the networking opportunities they provide, and the election rule for these committees vary at random. The results show that female members hesitate to join committees that would grant them power, and that they are less likely to opt for upward networking opportunities than their male party colleagues. This effect is particularly strong in hierarchically organised youth parties of centre-right parties. Findings on preferred election rules mostly hold for women from left-wing parties. In contrast to men, this group prefers party quotas. Analysing differences by gender and political orientation, this article shows a clear gender preference gap exists both within and across youth parties.
Building on the understanding that a career is a dynamic concept, this article applies the idea that parliamentarians' legislative activities vary according to their career stage and age. This is ...partly a function of experience and partly a function of future career prospects. Using a new data set of the German Bundestag (2002–13) that pinpoints the age and career stage of MPs at the time of individual activities, namely, attending votes, posing parliamentary questions, and holding rapporteurships, we identify practical and normative challenges to MPs' legislative work: It takes time to learn the trade and as the desire for re‐election dissipates, a last‐period problem arises. MPs significantly reduce their activity levels toward the end of their legislative careers, indicating a clear loss of accountability toward their parties and their constituents.
Around the globe, governments are promoting a transition toward a sustainable economy. Many transition strategies include a central role for the forest and its ecosystem services in the pursuit of ...their sustainability goals. While this nurtures hopes that the economic significance of the forest sector will recover, a sustainability transition is likely to intensify further utilizations of forests. This certainly implies synergies in the targeted provision of various forest ecosystem services (FES), but it also bears the danger of increasing trade-offs and conflicts. Often caused by demand from other sectors, such trade-offs usually occur in the forest, i.e. between FES. Moreover, sustainable economy claims can also imply the clearance of forest area and thus are trade-offs with the forest. The collection of papers in this special issue elaborates on such trade-offs induced by sustainability ambitions and their implications for conflicts at the level of policy formulation and implementation. The cases reveal how land-use conflicts with the forest have become a tangible issue for sustainability transitions. Policy goal conflicts arising due to trade-offs between FES – being intensified by increased sustainability demands – are often tackled by suppressing FES not compatible with a prevailing timber-production oriented forestry tradition or delegated to the forest management level, where economic and power structures favor extractive forestry practices. The special issue thus highlights the various ways in which the forest can be impacted by sustainable economy transitions and encourages more attention as well as a more differentiated view of the role of the forest in these transitions.
•A sustainability transition causes synergies and trade-offs for the forest sector.•The trade-offs are most obvious for wood use and FES provision in the forest.•Trade-offs may also occur due to increased land-use competition with the forest.•Depending on the context, trade-offs result in goal and implementation conflicts.•The Special Issue highlights and compares selected conflicts from various contexts.
Empirical research can rely on comprehensive longitudinal roll-call data for a number of countries, most notably the US Congress (for example, Lewis et al. 2017; Poole and Rosenthal 1997),1 the ...European Parliament (Hix, Noury and Roland 2005), and the British House of Commons (for example, Eggers and Spirling 2016; Norton 1975); on some cross-country comparative datasets for shorter periods of time (Carey 2007; Coman 2015; Hix and Noury 2016; Sieberer 2006); and on numerous contemporary and historical single-country datasets.2 For the German Bundestag, RCV data has thus far only been available for limited periods of time (Ohmura 2014b; Saalfeld 1995b; Sieberer 2010; Stratmann 2006). Whenever possible, we coded the party requesting the roll call to allow researchers to model this selection process.7Figure 3 plots RCVs initiated by government parties, opposition parties and both types of parties together, both in absolute numbers and as percentages of all roll calls during a legislative period (indicated by the height of the bars). ...the dataset includes variables on the way MPs won their seats. ...the dataset records the exact time periods during which MPs held any of the following executive or legislative offices: cabinet minister, junior minister, president or vice president of the Bundestag, (vice-)chair of a standing committee, (vice-)chair of a parliamentary party group and party whip.
The settlement area is expanding at the cost of agricultural land in densely populated regions such as Central Europe. This development is also affecting the forest. Forest clearances due to, e.g. ...traffic and energy infrastructure development, require afforestation elsewhere but surfaces providing appropriate soil are increasingly scarce. Switzerland is an important case in point. It is densely populated, exhibits a large amount of forest – also in the lowlands – and although it features a strong forest protection law, it recently allowed compensating forest clearances with non-forest related offsets. Based on the results of a Q-methodology survey conducted during a stakeholder workshop, we show that pressure for more flexible forest specific rules largely stems from “outside” the forest sector, i.e. the agriculture and development sector. Only a small group of actors aims at reinstalling the more restrictive regime, whereas the largest group of actors embraces the status quo. This group rejects expansion of more flexible rules and adheres to strengthening the top of the mitigation hierarchy, i.e. prioritizing the mitigation of habitat loss caused by development. This interpretation of biodiversity offsetting aligns with the conviction that development needs to respect the limits of growth. Prioritizing the mitigation hierarchy requires a planning rather than a market coordination approach. We show that in a context with rigid biodiversity offsetting rules, following a multipurpose forest regime and with high land-use competition, stakeholder preferences impede the integration of habitat banking approaches into the planning of compensatory afforestation and biodiversity offsetting in the forest.
•We conducted a Q-methodology survey on replacing forest clearances in Switzerland.•Pressure for flexible rules is exerted mainly from outside of the forest sector.•A small group of actors aims at strengthening afforestation again more.•The majority of the stakeholders supports rigid implementation of current rules.•They reject market coordination and give priority to the avoidance of clearances.
Mixed-member proportional systems have been implemented assuming a mandate divide. Using individual-level voting data from the 15th to 17th Bundestag (2002-13), this article argues that the divide ...occurs according to candidacy strategy (pure district, pure party list or dual) and re-election probability rather than the type of electoral mandate obtained. Emphasising votes of constituency interests, it questions the assumption that the motivation behind deviating from the parliamentary party group line is rooted in serving the respective MP's constituency.
The literature on legislative voting either explicitly excludes free votes from its analysis, does not distinguish them from other recorded votes, or analyses only topic-specific subsets of them. ...This research note shows all three approaches to be problematic, and argues for a reconsideration of how free votes are approached in the literature. Drawing on a dataset covering all recorded votes in the German Bundestag (1949-2021), and analysing the topics, initiators and voting behaviour on all free votes held, it is shown that free votes are frequent, address a broad range of issues, and display substantial variation in legislative behaviour. Most importantly, there is a strong indication that free votes are held on topics on which parties refrain from taking a position. The findings have substantial implications for the study of parliamentary floor voting.
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