Policy representation by German parties at the 2017 federal election

Andranik S. Tangian

No 107, Working Paper Series in Economics from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management

Abstract: The paper estimates the policy representation of 34 German parties that participate in the 2017 Bundestag (federal) election. For this purpose, the party positions on 31 topical issues are compared with the results of recent public opinion polls. Then we construct the party indices of popularity (the average percentage of the population represented) and universality (frequency in representing a majority). We find that the currently governing conservative union CDU/CSU and the social-democratic SPD are ranked only 27th and 22nd, respectively, being least representative among the four parties in the 2013 Bundestag. The most representative Bundestag faction is the GRÜNE - the smallest one. The current Bundestag representativeness is about 50%, as if the correspondence with the electorate's preference on every policy issue is being decided by tossing a coin, meaning that the 2013 Bundestag is practically unrelated to public opinion.

Keywords: policy representation; representative democracy; direct democracy; elections; coalitions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:kitwps:107

DOI: 10.5445/IR/1000075518

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