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Party Politics in Germany is the only English-language study of its kind and examines the phenomenon of party politics in the Federal Republic through comparison across time and space. It draws upon new data from the 2002 Federal elections and recent Land elections, as well as on a far more explicitly comparative literature than is generally found in single-country studies. The book not only sheds new light on political phenomena in Germany but also allows students of the comparative method to apply some of the key concepts, models and approaches with which they are familiar to the rich contex

This article charts the rise of the 'Alternative for Germany' ( Alternative für Deutschland or AfD) from its inception in late 2012 to its unexpectedly strong performance in the 2017 Federal election. In terms of the 'inward' aspect of Euroscepticism, the article considers the impact of the emergence of successively more hardline leaderships in 2015 and 2017, which led to a shift beyond opposition to aspects of the European integration process to a more profound critique of German society and politics. In terms of the 'outward' aspect, it assesses the significance of these developments in the wider debates around Euroscepticism and populism. The article concludes that the AfD's Euroscepticism is now nested within an ideological profile that increasingly conforms to the template of an orthodox European right-wing populist party. It argues that the widely unanticipated level of electoral support for the AfD in the 2017 Federal elections and its status as the main opposition party in the Bundestag is a systemic shock and potential critical juncture in the development of the German party system and the contestation of European integration in the Federal Republic.

The eighteenth Bundestag elections of 22 September 2013 brought important changes to the Bundestag party system, some of which are contingent but others of which are more systemic and profound. The narrow failure of the FDP to scale the electoral threshold has had an impact on coalition negotiations and the improvement in the overall vote share for the CDU/CSU and the SPD, for the first time since the 1960s represents a significant, if probably only temporary, concentration of the German party system in the Bundestag. More systemically, the election saw a continuation of the ongoing redistribution of voting power in the Bundestag in favor of the catch-all parties as formateurs. The article also discusses how the increased importance of the potential formateuer parties has gone hand-in-hand with a greater focus on the individual leading candidates, and concludes that this is particularly good news for the CDU/CSU, given the political qualities of Angela Merkel and the failure of the SPD to find and support a leading candidate that can match her political acumen.

This article examines the impact of party system change in Germany on the role, status and power of the two catch-all parties (CDU/CSU and SPD) in the light of the 2009 federal election. It argues that party system change has had a paradoxical impact. On the one hand, the decline in the overall catch-all vote undermines the two parties' integrative function. On the other, the presence of three small parties (FDP, Greens, Left Party) means that, with the possible exception of the Greens, no single small party has the potential to be 'kingmaker' and, because of their relative positions in ideological space, neither can they act in concert to extract concessions from the two catch-all parties. Thus, despite the impressive performance of the FDP in the 2009 federal election and the electoral meltdown suffered by the SPD, in office-seeking terms the catch-all parties are currently less vulnerable to small party threats of defection to alternative coalitions. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.]