[caption id="attachment_12583" align="alignright" width="225"] Trying to Rub off the Incumbency Advantage from the Old Guy[/caption] The local MP is stepping down after a mere 19 years, and the local mayor wants his job. The outgoing MP won his seat five times in a row on a plurality of the Erststimmen. Structural factors aside, this looks…
VS/Springer has just published the a massive volume on the 2009 Bundestag election. Our chapter looks (once more) into the differences between voters in the former Federal Republic and their eastern compatriots in the 2009 election. While these differences persist, we find that people in the West are also deviating from traditional patterns of voting behaviour. (In German)
The German polity tries to deal with an electorally insignificant extremist NPD five months before the election, looks very stupid in the process
Gerhard Frey, notorious right-wing publisher, politician and founder of Deutsche Volksunion (DVU) founder has died one day after his 80th birthday. He leaves behind an impressive legacy of making money from hatred.
Germany’s right-wing extremist NPD has published a confidential brief regarding a potential ban of the party that was compiled by government agencies
I’ve just completed a review of Gideon Botsch’s history of Right-Wing Extremism in Germany after 1945 for Jahrbuch Extremismus & Demokratie. The book is good, but obviously, I have few quibbles, mostly with the (lack of) theoretical underpinnings. I also think that it is a bit too short (I seem never to get enough of…
The NPD is Germany’s oldest surviving Extreme Right party. It has been around for about five decades. After merging with its long-time rival German People’s Union (DVU, the ruling mentioned in the post was finally squashed), it is also a serious contender for the coveted title of Germany’s daftest party (see exhibit number one). While…
Like social networks, multilevel data structures are everywhere once you start thinking about it. People live in neighbourhoods, neighbourhoods are nested in municipalities, which make up provinces – well, you get the picture. Even if we have no substantive interest in their effects, it often makes sense to control for structures in our data to…
Today is Oscar Gabriel’s retirement/leaving do. Unfortunately, I could not make it to the party, but I wrote a chapter for the super-secret Festschrift that should by now be in his hands. The chapter (in German) deals with an old favourite of his (and mine): cultural-attitudinal differences between East and West Germany (or rather between…
Yesterday, the BBC’s man in Berlin discovered that there are constitutional limits to Merkel’s ability to somehow save the Euro. Following a constitutional amendment in the 1990s, article 23 of the Basic Law stipulates that any further transfers of sovereignty to the EU require absolute two-thirds majorities in both the Bundestag and the Federal Council…