The Impact of Institutional and Financial Constraints on Party Behaviour in Local Politics

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer review

Authors

  • Martin Gross
  • Dominic Nyhuis
  • Sebastian Block
  • Jan A. Velimsky

Research Organisations

External Research Organisations

  • Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU)
  • Statistical Office of the State of Baden-Württemberg
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Details

Original languageEnglish
JournalSwiss political science review
Early online date8 Aug 2024
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 8 Aug 2024

Abstract

Political parties are not free to choose which issues to focus on in parliament. At the national level, it is mostly economic and societal problem pressures which impact parties' issue attention. In this paper, we argue that at lower levels of multilevel governance systems, parties are additionally limited by institutional and financial constraints beyond their decision-making competencies, which should impact their issue attention. Based on a novel dataset of local parties' parliamentary questions regarding 19 policy areas in 35 German local councils between 2011 and 2020, we demonstrate the constraining effect of institutional and economic conditions on party behaviour: parties are aware of the institutional constraints and devote more attention to issues where municipalities have more legal leeway, but this effect is moderated by the financial constraints that local communities face.

Keywords

    Contextual factors, Germany, Local politics, Parliamentary questions, Text analysis

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Sustainable Development Goals

Cite this

The Impact of Institutional and Financial Constraints on Party Behaviour in Local Politics. / Gross, Martin; Nyhuis, Dominic; Block, Sebastian et al.
In: Swiss political science review, 08.08.2024.

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer review

Gross M, Nyhuis D, Block S, Velimsky JA. The Impact of Institutional and Financial Constraints on Party Behaviour in Local Politics. Swiss political science review. 2024 Aug 8. Epub 2024 Aug 8. doi: 10.1111/spsr.12628
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