Local Party Systems in Germany

根据以行动者为中心的制度主义(由Mayntz和Scharpf提出)，地方政党制度可以被认为是每个市政当局的政治行动者星座。有三个主要的地方行为者：政党、独立的地方名单和个人候选人。据推测，由于地方特点，这些演员星座在德国1万多个城市之间存在差异。国家和地方政党制度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，地方政党制度并不一定是国家政党制度的翻版。该项目旨在识别这种多元的地方政党制度及其自1990年以来的发展模式。两者还必须在横截面和纵向设计的四个因果因素的基础上进行系统的解释。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，以及(4)结构背景影响。它包括1990年至2010年期间德国13个地区州的所有地方议会选举。这些数据将延续到2016年黑森州和下萨克森州的地方选举。地方政党制度的类型学使用探索性集群中心分析。这导致了最高的簇内同质性，同时也导致了完全的簇间异质性。地方政党制度的变化是通过序列分析草案观察到的，这是地方政党制度在特定市政当局的“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市镇数量的问题提供了一种创新的解决办法。在调查期间，东德的情况尤其如此。根据前面提到的四大因果因素，地方政党制度的集群及其随时间的变化应用判别函数分析来解释。本研究回答了许多开放的问题。小党、独立地方名单和独立候选人往往在地方选举结果中被归类为“其他”。这些地方团体之间的系统区别使得能够分析它们日益增长的地方意义，并了解它们对德国国家政党制度的地方影响。

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.