You have to be a German state politics aficionado with a certain local bias to find this mildly interesting, but this week we learned that Kurt Beck, the longest-serving German minister president, is having talks with the select group of people who might succeed him. These talks are obviously confidential, so obviously someone leaked the…
Events in North Rhine-Westphalia are quickly becoming the stuff of legends. The end of the red-green minority government on Wednesday has triggered a series of reshuffles that would make Machiavelli dizzy. And yes, the dissolution of parliament might not have been a constitutional requirement. Sorry for any inconveniences caused.
Much to everybody’s surprise, the minority government in North Rhine-Westphalia collapsed today. Minority governments are a rarity in Germany. The federal constitution, reflecting Germany’s inter-war experience of unstable governments and intense political strife, practically rules them out. Constitutional details at the state level differ but the general assumption is that the government needs the reliable…
Colleagues/friends Matt Goodwin and Jocelyn Evans have created quite a stir with their report on the attitudes of BNP and UKIP supporters/voters. Obviously, UKIP is not happy at all about being lumped together with what remains of Nick Griffin’s party. Being introduced as a ‘polite alternative’ to the BNP (albeit with a rhetorical question mark)…
As any fan of Midsomer Murders can testify, the English country side is a beautiful but terrifying place. But this post on the EPOP mailing list is not about mad members of the gentry, vicious vicars or fornicating farmers, but about a potential parish Putin
Just under one year after the fact, here is my analysis of the latest election in Rhineland-Palatinate.
The 2011 election in Rhineland-Palatinate was a political earthquake: Following a string of political scandals, the SPD lost almost ten percentage points of their support, while the CDU could hardly improve on their disastrous 2006 result. The FDP is no longer represented in the state parliament. The Greens more than tripled their last result, allowing them to enter a coalition with the SPD for the first time.
Analyses at the municipal level show that the party improved most in their urban strongholds while still showing a (relatively) weak performance in rural areas. This will make it difficult to sustain the momentum of their victory. Moreover, the SPD is battered and bruised and needs to select a new leader, but veteran minister president Kurt Beck shows no inclination to step down. This does not bode well for a coalition that needs to organise the state’s fiscal consolidation and structural transformation.
runmlwin is an ado that claims to make the functionality of MLwiN available as a Stata command, postestimation analysis and all. Too good to be true?
My long-overdue review of David Art’s latest book (Inside the Radical Right) for West European Politics.
Den Luxus getrennter Ämter – Kanzler + Präsident – leisten sich die Bundesländer nicht. Aber das bedeutet nicht, dass es die Aufgaben und die Rolle eines Staatsoberhaupts auf Länderebene nicht gibt. Der Ministerpräsident übernimmt sie – beide. Damit müsste also jeder Ministerpräsident wissen, “wie Präsident geht”, denn es ist ein ureigener Teil seines Jobs. schreibt…
I’m currently working on an analysis of the latest state election in Rhineland-Palatinate using aggregate data alone, i.e. electoral returns and structural information, which is available at the level of the state’s roughly 2300 municipalities. The state’s Green party (historically very weak) has roughly tripled their share of the vote since the last election in…