ABSTRACT Although foreign policy is often associated with national unity and national interests, this view overlooks the role of parties as pivotal decision-makers in shaping foreign policy. Political ideologies and party dynamics influence foreign policy decisions, from coalition unity to opposition strategies. We assume that when events requiring a quick reaction occur, parties will act more cohesively. In addition, the legislative and executive parts of government parties will move closer to each other. Opposition parties, on the other hand, will use this opportunity to present themselves as an alternative to the government and express criticism. To test this theory, we look at speeches in parliament about foreign policy in Germany between 1990 and 2021. We differentiate between types of events and their severity. Applying text-as-data methods to scale party positions, governing party members increase intra- and inter-party cohesion, thus showing a rally effect. The same is not true for opposition parties, who generally distance themselves from the government. Our findings shed new light on event-based approaches when explaining party movements and party behaviour in parliament.

ABSTRACT This article tests the concept of regional populism to explain the electoral success of the CSU and the Free Voters in Bavaria, two parties that together have governed the state since 2018. It bridges research on populism and regionalism by presenting a new set of survey items that measure regional populism. The CSU and Free Voters are often accused of ‘being populist’, yet they do not conform to standard definitions of populist parties. However, both pit the interests of their ‘Bavarian Heimat’ against external elites in ‘Berlin’ and ‘Brussels’. This study analyses the extent to which regional populist attitudes resonate with different voter groups. The items are tested in a novel post-election survey conducted for the 2023 Bavarian state election. While regional populist attitudes are widespread among AfD, Free Voters, and CSU supporters, regional populism is a stronger predictor of support for the CSU and Free Voters than general populism. In contrast, the AfD vote is better explained by general (i.e. non-regional) populism than regional populism. The findings underscore the significance of regional populism in explaining the success of regional parties and advocate for future research to thoroughly investigate the populist dimensions of regional political discourse across Europe.

ABSTRACT The far right is gaining increasing traction among young voters – an age group that constitutes the future electorate. Yet, the underlying drivers of this trend remain insufficiently explored. This article addresses this gap by investigating why the ‘Alternative for Germany’ (AfD) resonates so strongly with young voters in eastern Germany – a region typical for the far right’s rise and consolidation. Drawing on established approaches from electoral sociology and contemporary insights from research on populism, the far right, and youth political behaviour, the study analyses original survey data collected during the 2024 state elections in eastern Germany. The findings reveal that support for the AfD among young voters is not only strikingly stable, but also closely linked to strong levels of party identification and pronounced nativist attitudes. These results point to a broader normalisation of far-right positions among younger generations and provide important insights for both political actors and future research.

ABSTRACT The 2024 state elections in eastern Germany became a focal point of debate, not only because of the AfD's strong performances. These elections witnessed the debut of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) in German state politics. Research suggests that the left-conservative and populist stance of this new party could affect the AfD's voter base, potentially attracting significant support, particularly in eastern Germany. This study investigates the impact of the BSW on the AfD in the 2024 state elections in Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg. It aims to determine whether and how the Sahra Wagenknecht-led alliance affects the AfD's electorate. By leveraging GLES survey data, which includes oversampling for the eastern German state elections, the study examines the direct competition between AfD and BSW. We assess whether the factors that previously motivated AfD voters are now also driving support for BSW – or whether BSW is attracting these voters for different reasons. Furthermore, the study uses the popular German voting advice application Wahl-O-Mat to analyse the programmatic alignment between BSW, AfD, and other parties. This analysis aims to provide a thorough understanding of the dynamics introduced by new political players and their influence on AfD's prospects in the eastern German state elections.

ABSTRACT With this study, we add to the literature on cue-taking and descriptive representation by focusing on a local, low-information context. Specifically, we empirically analyse voting patterns in the 2024 municipal elections in Mannheim, Germany. In this election, a free-list ballot design allowed voters to distribute 48 votes among 508 candidates of multiple parties, making it an ideal case to study these prominent theories of vote allocation. First, we show that party affiliation, ballot position, and incumbency significantly predict vote totals as expected. Ballot cues indicating candidates’ occupations and (to a limited extent) their gender additionally affect electoral outcomes. These findings complement previous experimental studies on ballot cues with observational research to better understand voter decision-making in complex real-world electoral settings. Using multilevel models, we further uncover a strong relevance of (geographical) representation and a home-district advantage in particular: Candidates receive about two-hundred per cent more votes in their own residential districts compared to their results in other districts. They also achieve substantially better results in districts with similar geographic location as their own. Lastly, voter age dynamics suggest that candidates benefit electorally when their age aligns with the demographic profile of the respective district.

ABSTRACT Baden-Württemberg's previous mixed electoral system, which gave voters a single vote with three functions, has changed the electorate's voting behaviour in non-obvious ways compared to the German federal electoral system. The results of a unique social experiment – the two-level (Bundestag-Landtag) electoral systems in the Federal Republic of Germany – show that voting in single-member districts does not necessarily reduce party system fragmentation at the regional level. Indeed, it turns out that the additional functions of the vote cast in a single-member district in Baden-Württemberg's Landtag elections cause voters to treat it similarly to how they treat the vote for party lists in the Bundestag election. This conclusion was reached by comparing voting results in the elections to the Landtag and the Bundestag in Baden-Württemberg and four other Länder, where the rules governing elections to state parliaments and the lower house of the federal parliament are similar. The analysis results are a significant contrast to conventional perceptions of electoral system consequences, thus confirming that easy associations do not correspond to the real effects of certain institutional arrangements.

ABSTRACT This contribution studies voting for the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) through a three-dimensional policy space model (economic, transnational and morality dimension). What makes the new German party special is its unusual bundling of economically left-leaning with right-leaning positions on the transnational dimension, most prominently on immigration. We investigate how this policy mix is reflected among its voters. In a first study, we use cross-sectional survey data from March 2024 (GLES Tracking T57) to show that voting intentions for the BSW are associated with more left-wing economic positions and with more nationalist positions, but unrelated to positions on the morality dimension. In a second follow-up study, we use panel survey data (GLES Panel) to establish that positions on the economic and transnational dimensions shape switching to the BSW (in June 2024) in conjunction with individuals’ prior party preferences. In line with the spatial perspective, nationalist positions predict switching to the BSW among previous supporters of left-leaning parties, whereas it is economically left-wing positions that predict switching to the BSW among previous supporters of right-leaning parties. Our results support a policy space-based explanation of the early success of the BSW, suggesting that new parties may succeed by offering new bundles of policy positions.

ABSTRACT Coalition governments in parliamentary democracies hold a quasi-monopoly on decision-making. Even so, they have to make trade-offs in their legislative behaviour, especially when it comes to polarising issues. Coalition governments must carefully time the introduction of controversial legislation throughout the electoral cycle. Controversial laws are politically divisive policies that generate public debate, serve as points of attack for opposition criticism and risk intra-coalition conflict. Drawing on the literature on temporal strategies for law-making and issue attention, this paper argues that governments introduce controversial laws as far away as possible from past or future elections to avoid electoral costs. The paper tests the expectation based on 1,832 government laws introduced in the German Bundestag from 1983–2017. Descriptive and multivariate results from fixed-effects OLS regressions confirm the expectation. Coalition governments tend to introduce controversial laws significantly closer to the middle of a term than non-controversial laws. The findings expand the literature on legislative decision-making.

ABSTRACT For 75 years two multinational entities, the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), have helped shape the liberal international order and contributed to peace and security in Europe. Since the end of the Cold War, the majority of European states have been members of both. However, two long-standing European NATO members – the United Kingdom (UK) and Turkey - stand out, owing to their ambivalence about membership of the EU. The UK arrived late and left early, while Turkey has never managed to reach destination Europe. In both cases, Germany has been a key bilateral ally, despite its own deep-seated commitment to European integration. Questions, both practical and intellectual, thus arise concerning the UK’s post-Brexit relations with the EU as well as Turkey’s uncertain relations. The aim of this article is to look at German attitudes towards third countries, with particular reference to the UK and Turkey, and towards differentiated integration (DI). It will advance the academic debate by critically analysing understudied recent developments in UK-German relations and offering practical lessons for the current debate on the EU’s further enlargement.

ABSTRACT Populist parties criticise the functioning of representative democracy. Based on the general reaction strategies of governing parties to the rise of populist parties – ignoring, delegitimising, adapting – the question arises whether governing parties leave the fundamental issue of democracy reform to the populists without a fight, whether they delegitimise populists’ questioning of the institutional status quo and take on the role of its rigorous defenders, or whether they react with programmatic adaptation, either by partially adopting populist proposals or by developing their own ideas for improving democracy. The rise of the Alternative for Germany constitutes an interesting case study in this regard. The analysis draws on the manifestos for the 2013 and 2017 federal elections, the 2018 coalition agreement and its 2019 midterm review as well as media reports and parliamentary documents on the actual democracy policy actions of the grand coalition government between 2018 and 2021.