Local Party Systems in Germany

根据行为者中心制度主义（由Mayntz和Scharpf），地方政党系统可以被认为是每个城市的政治行为者的星座。地方行为者主要有三个：政党、独立的地方名单和个人候选人。据推测，由于地方特性的不同，德国1万多个城市的政党结构各不相同，但国家和地方政党体系的结构特征非常相似。必须强调地方行为者的数量、比例及其随时间的变化。然而，国际比较地方政府研究强调，地方政党制度不一定是国家政党制度的复制品，该项目旨在确定1990年以来这种多重地方政党制度及其发展模式。这两个也必须在横向和纵向设计的基础上，四束因果因素系统地解释。其中包括：（1）地方政治文化;（2）地方选举法的变化;（3）地方政治行为者的组织程度;（4）结构性背景效应。它包括1990年至2010年德国13个地区州的所有地方议会选举。并将数据延续到2016年黑森和下萨克森萨克森的地方选举。地方政党系统的类型学采用探索性聚类中心分析。这导致了最高的团内均匀性，同时又有完全的团间不均匀性。本文通过序列分析法，将地方政党制度的变迁视为特定城市的“政治生命历程”。这些方法为区域改革可能随着时间的推移改变领土和城市数量的问题提供了一个创新的解决方案。在调查期间，这种情况在德国最为突出。根据上述四组因果因素，运用判别函数分析法解释了地方政党制度的集群及其随时间的变化，回答了许多悬而未决的问题。小党派、独立的地方名单和独立候选人往往在地方选举结果中被归纳在“其他”类别下。这些地方团体之间的系统性区别允许分析其日益增长的地方意义，并了解其对德国国家政党体系的地方影响。

According to the actor-centered institutionalism (by Mayntz and Scharpf) local party systems can be recognized as constellation of political actors in each municipality. There are three main local actors: parties, independent local lists and individual candidates. It is assumed that these actor constellations differ between more than 10,000 German municipalities due to local idiosyncrasies.The structural characteristics of national and local party systems are very similar. The number of local actors, their proportions and their changes over time have to be highlighted. However, international comparative local government studies emphasizes that local party systems are not necessarily copies of the national party system.The project aims at the identification of such multiple local party systems and their development patterns since 1990. Both have also to be explained systematically in cross-sectional and longitudinal design on the basis of four bundles of causal factors. These include: (1) local political culture, (2) changes in the local election laws, (3) degree of organization of local political actors, and (4) structural context effects.The study is based on the continuation of a local elections database that was created in the Collaborative Research Centre 580. It includes all elections of local parliaments between 1990 and 2010 in the 13 German area states. And the data will be continued up to the local elections in Hesse and Lower Saxony in 2016.The typology of the local party systems is using exploratory cluster center analysis. That causes the highest intracluster homogenity simultaneously with a complete intercluster heterogenity. The change of local party systems is observed as their "political life course" in particular municipalities by drafts upon sequence analysis. These methods offer an innovative solution for the problem that regional reforms may change the territories and numbers of municipalities over time. In the investigation period this was foremost the case in East Germany. The clusters of local party systems and their changes over time shall be explained by discriminant function analysis according to the former mentioned four bundles of causal factors.The study answers a lot of open questions. Small parties, independent local lists and independent candidates are often summarized in local election results under the category "others". The systematic distinction between these local groupings allows to analyse their growing local significance and to undesrstand their local impacts on the German national party system.