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

authored by

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.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Political Science

External Organisation(s)

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

Type

Article

Journal

Swiss political science review

ISSN

1424-7755

Publication date

08.08.2024

Publication status

E-pub ahead of print

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Political Science and International Relations

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and Communities

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1111/spsr.12628 (Access: Open)