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

verfasst von

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

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.

Organisationseinheit(en)

Institut für Politikwissenschaft

Externe Organisation(en)

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU)
Statistisches Landesamt Baden-Württemberg

Typ

Artikel

Journal

Swiss political science review

ISSN

1424-7755

Publikationsdatum

08.08.2024

Publikationsstatus

Elektronisch veröffentlicht (E-Pub)

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Politikwissenschaften und internationale Beziehungen

Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung

SDG 11 – Nachhaltige Städte und Gemeinschaften

Elektronische Version(en)

https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12628 (Zugang: Offen)