1. Introduction In the field of public opinion and voting behaviour, few concepts have stimulated as many analyses and have aroused as much debate as that of party identification. The idea of a durable “identification” with a political party has been a staple in American electoral studies since the 1940s and is at the core…
1 Introduction For the last twenty-five years or so, party identification has been said to be in decline in Germany. And yet, those two parties which are most closely associated with traditional concepts of partisanship, i.e. the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) on the right and the Social Democrats (SPD) on the left – are once more…
1. Introduction Since 1949, German political parties have apparently operated under very favorable conditions. One of the foremost articles of the Federal Constitution (which was framed almost exclusively by former party politicians who survived the terror of the Nazis) secures them a guaranteed role in the political process and grants them special privileges.1 More important…
Im sozialpsychologischen Modell gilt die Parteiidentifikation (PI) als wichtigste Determinante der Wahlentscheidung. Das Gefühl, einer politischen Partei in besonderer Weise verbunden zu sein, so die Theorie, ist auf individueller Ebene über Jahre, wenn nicht über Jahrzehnte hinweg stabil und wirkt bei der Wahrnehmung der aktuellen politischen Lage wie eine Art Filter. Nur dann, wenn die…