Search results

1. Einleitung -- 1.1. Ökologische Gefährdung und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung: ein Problemaufriß -- 1.2. Zentrale Fragen der Untersuchung -- 1.3. Verwendetes Datenmaterial -- 2. Gesellschaftliches Konfliktpotential und Konflikttheorie -- 3. Wachstumsparadigma und gesellschaftlicher Grundkonsens -- 3.1. Soziales Paradigma industrieller Gesellschaften -- 3.2. Basiskonsens und Verfassungskonsens in der Bundesrepublik -- 4. Gesellschaftlicher Grundkonsens und Muster gesellschaftlicher Leitvorstellungen -- 4.1. Paradigma, Werte, Einstellungen: Operationale Vorklärung -- 4.2. Wertkonsens und Wertdissens -- 5. Träger des Konflikts: Generationen und Klassen? -- 5.1. Generationen und Konfliktpotential -- 5.2. Sozialstruktur und Konfliktpotential: Zur Diskussion um die "neue Klasse" -- 5.3. Generationenbezogene Bildung sozialer Milieus statt "neue Klasse"? -- 6. Umweltschutz, Verteilungsfrage und politischer Konflikt -- 6.1. Die ökologische Herausforderung als "moderner" Verteilungskonflikt -- 6.2. Ökologie und politischer Protest -- 7. Zur Rolle von Bewegungsorganisationen und öffentlicher Kritik im Umweltschutz -- 7.1. Bewegungsorganisationen: Struktur, Bedeutung und "Vernetzung" -- 7.2. Zur Bedeutung von öffentlicher Kritik für den industriellen Umweltschutz -- 8. Zusammenfassung und Ausblick -- Tabellenanhang -- Tabellenverzeichnis -- Verzeichnis der Schaubilder und Übersichten -- Studienbeschreibungen -- Personenregister.

Examining the German case in the wider Western European context for the period 1996–2017, the chapter investigates the role of supply and demand factors for vote switching in general and switching to right-wing populist parties in particular. Combining survey data from the CSES with party data from the Manifesto Project, the chapter shows that the growing success of right-wing populist parties, in Germany just as in other Western European countries, was a response to programmatic moves of mainstream center-left and center-right parties to the left. In general, voters' movements between parties did not follow a symmetric pattern. Changes to parties further left came about as responses to increasing voter-party distances on the socio-economic dimension. In the more recent past, switches to parties further right and, in particular, right-wing populist parties like the German AfD became more frequent, and they were associated with increasing distances on the socio-cultural dimension. ; The open access publication of the edited volume "The Changing German Voter" was financially supported by the Leibniz Association's Open Access Publication Fund for Monographs, the University of Mannheim, and the DGfW.

AbstractThis article addresses the alleged rollback of democracy by looking at the development of political cultures and the quality of democracy at the institutional level in three groups of European countries: longstanding democracies of western Europe, the first third‐wave countries (Portugal, Spain and Greece) and the new democracies of the 1990s in central and eastern Europe. Political culture and political structures are examined by bringing in two aspects: the actual performance of democracy and the normative foundations of the democratic order. Pulling in a range of empirical evidence – comparative population surveys, macro‐level data on the quality of democracy and contextual factors – the findings show that the normative foundations of democracy have not been negatively affected over the last decade, either in terms of political culture or with regard to political structures. In contrast, performance‐related measures of democratic practice and subsequent support for democracy reveal significant negative developments. Thus, if there is a rollback of democracy it is in its practice, not in its normative foundations. However, the alarm is set: Europe cannot afford a continuing performance crisis if it wants to avoid a legitimacy deficit of democracy that goes beyond dissatisfaction with performance to eroding the support for the normative base of democracy.

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Please check back later for the full article.Political representation is at the heart of liberal democracies. Whether democracy is understood as popular rule or as effective fate control by the people, representation is the means to realize the democratic idea of giving people a voice in large states. Thus, from a normative point of view, there should be a causal relationship between citizens' interests and policy decisions of representatives. Elections are the major link establishing causality between the wishes of the people and acts of governance. However, how and whom citizens elect varies considerably across democracies. The two ideal types, or "two visions of democracy" as Bingham Powell has called them, are majoritarian and proportional elections. In a majoritarian electoral system, citizens elect persons in single-member districts. In a proportional electoral system, citizens elect parties voting for lists and parties determine by candidate selection how those lists are composed. The causal link between citizens and representatives differs clearly between the two kinds of elections. The mandate in the majoritarian model is given to a person, and this person is held accountable in the next elections for her performance. In the proportional model, the mandate is given to a party, and the party is held accountable in the next elections. Thus, different actors have the duty to deliver representation in different electoral systems: individual deputies in the majoritarian, political parties in the proportional model. This implies that representatives should have different roles and foci of representation depending on the mode of their election. The two visions of democracy embedded in the two electoral systems carry distinct normative ideals about good representation. Looking at political representation in democracies from a comparative perspective, electoral systems seem to induce the respective orientation toward the mandate and whom to represent by different incentives for candidates running in single-member districts or on party lists. The role of a party delegate is more frequent in proportional, the delegate and trustee roles more frequent in majoritarian systems. In majoritarian systems, representatives are very much inclined to represent the median voter of the district; in proportional systems, representatives rather tend to represent their party voters.