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Adequately financed branches contribute to the integration of regional interests into statewide parties. Yet, we have limited knowledge about the determinants of branches' varying income levels in federal contexts. To address this shortage, this article elucidates why branches receive donations from citizens and businesses to different degrees. I hypothesise that party competition at the state level, the difference in regional economic performance and parties' historical legacies can account for the level of branches' donation revenue. Analysing German statewide party branches' income from 2009 to 2017, this study finds support for the facilitating impact of state and federal electoral contests on donation levels. Regional economic disparities, by contrast, only marginally affect donation revenues. At the same time, parties' path-dependent developments help explain asymmetries in average revenue levels between western and eastern branches. The study's findings suggest that intense regional party competition contributes to branches' financial independence within the statewide party organisation.

"Past cases are the European Court of Justice's most prominent tool in making and justifying the rulings and decisions which affect the everyday lives of more than half a billion people. Marc Jacob's detailed analysis of the use of precedents and case-based reasoning in the Court uses methods such as doctrinal scholarship, empirical research, institutional analysis, comparative law and legal theory in order to unravel and critique the how and why of the Court's precedent technique. In doing so, he moves the wider debate beyond received 'common law' versus 'civil law' figments and 'Eurosceptic' versus 'Euromantic' battle lines, and also provides a useful blueprint for assessing and comparing the case law practices of other dispute resolution bodies"--

AbstractIn many elections worldwide, citizens support politicians who have undermined democracy while in office. Why? For citizens to safeguard democratic institutions, they must not only disapprove of a politician's undemocratic conduct but also be willing to retract support from her at the next election. This article examines under which conditions citizen evaluations of undemocratic elite conduct become consequential for behavioral actions and whether specific segments of the electorate, such as politically educated, liberal, antimajoritarian, and moderate partisans, react more forcefully to such elite violations. Evidence from a survey experiment in Poland, closely following the sequence of presidential elections, reveals that citizens firmly dislike attacks on core electoral institutions, irrespective of whether they are committed by incumbent or oppositional copartisans. However, neither the electorate's nor any segment's dissent translates into revised vote choices. The study has implications for why undemocratic elite behavior often remains unpunished and citizens rarely avert democratic backsliding.

AbstractHow do individuals' underlying value orientations affect populist voting? Building on the congruency model in social psychology, we theorize that voters holding non‐conformist values feel closest to political actors who employ a taboo‐breaking populist style in the political debate. Moreover, we hypothesize that security and universalism values feed into vote choices between right‐wing and left‐wing parties. Leveraging structural equation modeling (SEM) and data from the 2017 German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES), we find that non‐conformist values predict voting for the populist far‐right Alternative for Germany (AfD), but not for the left‐wing populist The Left. Further, security and universalism values are associated with a higher probability of voting for not only populist but also mainstream parties. These findings point to the underlying role of basic human values in electoral support for populist parties and political behavior in general.

Party finance allows elucidating parties' behaviour in differing political and institutional contexts, yet only a few studies investigate expenditure patterns. Given that campaign activities are central for parties to fulfil their core functions in representative democracy, this study seeks to explain why parties invest in electoral campaigns to different degrees. We argue that high party fragmentation reinforces parties' focus on electoral races in election years, a mechanism we refer to as the 'campaign concentration effect'. By contrast, in less fragmented systems, parties invest more in campaigning on a continuous basis. A subnational analysis of the German party system between 2009 and 2017 provides evidence for this effect. Our results imply that growing party fragmentation nurtures parties' efforts to succeed in elections, which is likely to intensify parties' orientation towards short yet capital-intensive campaigns. ; ISSN:1354-0688 ; ISSN:1460-3683

Party finance allows elucidating parties' behaviour in differing political and institutional contexts, yet only a few studies investigate expenditure patterns. Given that campaign activities are central for parties to fulfil their core functions in representative democracy, this study seeks to explain why parties invest in electoral campaigns to different degrees. We argue that high party fragmentation reinforces parties' focus on electoral races in election years, a mechanism we refer to as the 'campaign concentration effect'. By contrast, in less fragmented systems, parties invest more in campaigning on a continuous basis. A subnational analysis of the German party system between 2009 and 2017 provides evidence for this effect. Our results imply that growing party fragmentation nurtures parties' efforts to succeed in elections, which is likely to intensify parties' orientation towards short yet capital-intensive campaigns.