 Political Opportunity Structures and the Success of the German Left Party in 2005Oliver Nachtwey and Tim Spier Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 2007, vol. 15, issue 2, 123-154 Abstract: The “Linkspartei”, an electoral alliance of the former communist PDS and the social democratic splinter WASG, scored 8.7% of the vote and managed to gain parliamentary representation at the German Federal Election of 2005. As this is the most significant electoral appearance of a party of the non-social democratic left in Germany since Weimar times, our article addresses the question of the underlying social and political conditions. To analyse the success of the Linkspartei the authors combine elements of social-structural research of voting behaviour, political opportunity theory, and the concept of framing. It is argued that there is a strong demand for social justice in the German electorate, which had no determined parliamentary representation in the last legislative periods due to the social democrats' strategic shift to the “Neue Mitte”, therefore opening a political opportunity structure for the electoral alliance of WASG and PDS. The Linkspartei on their side succeeded in addressing this electoral group by adopting a master frame of social justice. Date: 2007 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cdebxx:v:15:y:2007:i:2:p:123-154 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/09651560701483097 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe is currently edited by Andrew Kilmister More articles in Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe from Taylor & Francis Journals |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.