Suchergebnisse

How effective are elections in selecting and de-selecting MPs? How do electoral rules affect descriptive representation? To answer such fundamental questions, information is not only needed on those elected to parliament but also data on all those who stood for election. In this article fundamental questions of democratic selection and representation are addressed on the basis of a new data set containing information on each person who ever ran for a seat in the German Bundestag. This new dataset provides us with a complete picture of the personal side of political representation in Germany for the last 60 years -- from 1949 to 2009. We look at the different career sequences that typically lead to a seat in parliament, and we investigate the determinants of women's representation, both over time and with an inter-party comparison. Adapted from the source document.

"Do candidates with an academic or noble title enjoy a competitive advantage vis-à-vis candidates without one? In the study the authors compare nominal votes and list ranks between candidates with and without a title for all Bundestag-elections since 1949. They find that candidates with titles do indeed have higher nominal votes and better list places - but they cannot rule out that this is a self-selection effect, meaning that titles do not lead to political success, but that the politically successful have a higher probability to have a title, too." (author's abstract)