The German Macro Polity : essays on party identification, policy preferences, and elections

The Macro Polity introduced the study of elections in context and revealed a systematic interplay of voters and parties over time. Adapting the macro polity model to the multiparty system of Germany, the following papers indicate that dynamic representation is not limited to majoritarian systems. Adapting the concepts to the German system and developing time-series for macropartisanship and policy mood, this thesis presents an integrated dynamic model of the German democratic system: Parties are changing their platforms over time, and these changes are found to be driven by gains and losses in their vote shares in the last election. These changes in the vote distribution are linked to the changing public policy mood. As the electorate prefers more liberal or conservative policies, the change in policy mood is reflected in the vote share of the parties of the political left and right. Changes in public policy preferences are tracked back to fundamental economic forces making the electorate prefer more liberal policies depending on the state of the economy. Linking these single parts together over time results in a model of dynamic representation. The state of the economy and confidence in its future influences the partisan distribution of the public and its taste for liberalism. These influence the vote shares parties receive, which in turn makes parties adapt to the changed times by adapting the policies they offer to voters. This dynamic interplay is found to also work in the German multiparty context.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo