Is There a Regional Cleavage in Germany's Party System? Unequal Representation and Ideological Congruence in Germany 1980–2013

Abstract

Despite a growing convergence in the attitudes and behaviours of voters in the unified Germany, research shows that eastern and western German voters continue to differ over general ideological issues. How well does the party system in the unified Germany represent this ideological diversity? To answer this question, this paper analyses the extent to which (1) parties-in-electorates, (2) parties-in-parliament and (3) parties-in-government agree ideologically with voters from both regions between 1980 and 2013. Hypothetically, a lop-sided representation pattern, where the ideological location of parties converges primarily with those of western voters, suggests that existing ideological differences become institutionalised. Contrary to this scenario, we find that the German party system effectively articulates the ideological preferences of western and eastern voters. The same applies to parliaments and governments where the election outcome rather than any institutional bias affects the distance of parties to voters in the East and the West.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the research unit ‘Democracy and Democratisation’ at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin for providing a stimulating environment when I wrote a first draft of the article; Wolfgang Merkel, Sigrid Roßteutscher and Bernhard Weßels provided helpful comments on an earlier version.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Rohrschneider is Sir Robert Worcester Professor of Public Opinion and Survey Research at the University of Kansas. He is interested in comparative public opinion, political parties and democratic representation in West and Central-Eastern Europe. His monographs include Learning Democracy: Democratic and Economic Values in Unified Germany (Oxford University Press, 1999), which won the ECPR's 1998 Stein Rokkan prize; and, with Stephen Whitefield, The Strain of Representation: How Parties Represent Diverse Voters in Western and Eastern Europe (Oxford University Press, 2012). His articles have been published by such journals as the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics and Comparative Political Studies. His research has been supported by fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, German Marshall Fund and the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS). He is currently working on a project that assesses the impact of the economic crisis on the quality of democratic representation in Europe, 2008–13.

Notes

1. This is a variation of a statement attributed to former chancellor Willy Brandt who famously stated shortly after the fall of the Berlin wall that: ‘[N]ow grows together what belongs together.’

2. K. Arzheimer and J. Hecht, ‘“Goodbye Lenin?” Bundes- und Landtagswahlen seit 1990: Eine Ost-West Perspektive’, in Jürgen W. Falter; Oscar W. Gabriel; Bernhard Weβels (eds), Wahlen und Wähler: Analysen aus Anlass der Bundestagswahl 2002 (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2005); P. Doerschler and L.A. Banaszak, ‘Parties 1ANGLE1MSODEL2ANGLE21ANGLE1/MSODEL2ANGLE2without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies’, Electoral Studies 87/2 (2007), pp.359–70.

3. The PDS, in turn, is the successor to the SED which ruled eastern Germany with an iron fist between 1949 and 1989.

4. R. Campbell, ‘Socialist Values and Political Participation in Germany: A Barrier to “Inner Unity”?’, West European Politics 34/2 (2011), pp.362–83; R. Campell, ‘Values, Trust and Democracy in Germany: Still in Search of “Inner Unity”?’, European Journal of Political Research 51/5 (2012), pp.646–70.

5. D. Fuchs and R. Rohrschneider, ‘Der Einfluss politischer Wertorientierungen auf Regimeunterstützung und Wahlverhalten’, in H.D. Klingemann and M. Kaase (eds), Wahlen und Wähler: Analysen aus Anlaβ der Bundestagswahl 1998 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998), pp.245–82; S. Finkel, S. Humphries and K.D. Opp, ‘Socialist Values and the Development of Demokratischen Support in the Former East Germany’, International Politcal Science Review 22/4 (2001), pp.339–61.

6. E. Roller, ‘Ideological Basis of the Market Economy: Attitudes toward Distributional Principles and the Role of Government in Western and Eastern Germany’, European Journal of Sociology 10/2 (1994), pp.105–17; E. Roller, ‘Positions- und performanzbasierte Sachfragen-orientierungen und Wahlentscheidung: Eine theoretische und empirische Analyse aus Anlass der Bundestagswahl 1994', in M. Kaase and H.D. Klingemann (eds), Wahlen und Wähler-Analysen aus Anlass der Bundestagswahl 1994 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998), pp.173–219.

7. R. Rohrschneider and F. Jung, ‘Germany's Federal Election in September 2009 – Elections in Times of Duress – Introduction’, Electoral Studies 31/1 (2012), pp.1–4.

8. R.J. Dalton and W. Bürklin, ‘The Two German Electorates: The Social Bases of the Vote in 1990 and 1994’, German Politics 13/1 (1995), pp.79–99; H. Kasper and J.W. Falter, ‘Angenähert oder ausdifferenziert? Das Wahlverhalten in Ost- und Westdeutschaland bei der Bundestagswahl’, in O.W. Gabriel, J.W. Falter and B. Weβels (eds), Wahlen und Wähler: Analysen aus Anlaβ der Bundestagswahl 1998 (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2009), pp.202–27.

9. S. Lipset and S. Rokkan, ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments’, in Lipset and Rokkan, Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York: Free Press, 1967); F.U. Pappi, ‘Sozialstruktur, gesellschaftliche Wertorientierungen und Wahlabsicht: Ergebnisse eines Zeitvergleichs des deutschen Elektorats 1953 und 1976’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 18 (1977), pp.195–202.

10. R. Rohrschneider, R. Schmitt-Beck and F. Jung, ‘Short-Term Factors versus Long-Term Values: Explaining the 2009 Election Results’, Electoral Studies 31/1 (2012), pp.20–34.

11. C.J. Anderson and J. Hecht, ‘Voting When the Economy Goes Bad, Everyone Is in Charge, and No One Is to Blame: The Case of the 2009 German Election’, Electoral Studies 31/1 (2012), pp.5–19.

12. B. Wessels and H. Schmitt, ‘Meaningful Choices, Political Supply, and Institutional Effectiveness’, Electoral Studies 27 (2008), pp.19–30.

13. R.J. Dalton, D. Farrell and I. McAllister, Political Parties and Democratic Linkage (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

14. R. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), p.95.

15. J. Thomassen, ‘Empirical Research into Political Representation: Failing Democracy or Failing Models?’, in M.K. Jennings and T.E. Mann, Elections at Home and Abroad: Essays in Honor of Warren (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1994); R.J. Dalton and M.P. Wattenburg, Parties without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrialized Democracies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

16. Thomassen, ‘Empirical Research into Political Representation'; Wessels and Schmitt, ‘Meaningful Choices’.

17. H.E. Kriesi, E. Grande et al. (eds), West European Politics in the Age of Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge Univerisity Press, 2008).

18. D.B. Robertson, A Theory of Party Competition (New York: J. Wiley, 1976); B. Meguid, ‘Competition between Unequals: The Role of Mainstream Party Competition in Niche Party Success’, American Political Science Review 99/3 (2005), pp.347–59.

19. I. Budge, D. Robertson et al., Ideology, Strategy, and Party Change: Spatial Analysis of Post-War Election Programmes in 19 Democracies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); H.D. Klingemann and R.I. Hofferbert et al., Parties, Policies, and Democracies (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994).

20. P.E. Converse, ‘The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics’, in D. Apter (ed.), Ideology and Discontent (New York: Free Press, 1964); J. Zaller, The Nature of Mass Opinion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp.206–63.

21. A. Downs, An Economic Theory of Voting (New York: Harper & Row, 1957); J.M.C. Adams, Lawrence Ezrow and Garrett Glasgow, ‘Are Niche Parties Fundamentally Different from Mainstream Parties? The Causes and the Electoral Consequences of Western European Parties' Policy Shifts, 1976–1998’, American Journal of Political Science 50/3 (2006), pp.513–29.

22. See also R.J. Dalton, ‘Political Parties and Political Representation: Party Supporters and Party Elites in Nine Nations’, Comparative Political Studies 18/3 (1985), pp.267–99; A. Lijphart, Patterns of Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999); G.B. Powell, Elections as Instruments of Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000); S.N. Soroka and C. Wlezien, Degrees of Democracy: Politics, Public Opinion, and Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

23. R.J. Dalton and W. Buerklin, ‘Wähler als Wandervögel: Dealignment and the German Voter’, German Politics and Society [Special Issue: The Federal Election of 2002] 21/1 (2003), pp.57–75.

24. For example, W. Müller and M. Klein, ‘Die Klassenbasis in der Parteipräferenz des deutschen Wählers: Erosion oder Wandel?’, in R. Schmitt-Beck (ed.), Wählen in Deutschland (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2012), pp.85–110.

25. Pappi, ‘Sozialstruktur, gesellschaftliche Wertorientierungen und Wahlabsicht’; Campbell, ‘Socialist Values and Political Participation in Germany'.

26. R. Rohrschneider, Learning Democracy: Democratic and Economic Values in Unified Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

27. P. Doerschler and L.A. Banaszak, ‘Voter Support for the German PDS over Time: Dissatisfaction, Ideology, Losers, and East Identity’, Electoral Studies 87/2 (2007), pp.359–70.

28. Ibid.

29. Rohrschneider et al., ‘Short-Term Factors’.

30. F.U. Pappi and J. Brandenburg, ‘Die Politikvorschläge der Bundestagsparteien aus Wählersicht: Zur Konstruierbarkeit von Politikräumen für das deutsche Parteiensystem’, in Schmitt-Beck (ed.), Wählen in Deutschland, pp.276–301; Müller and Klein, ‘Die Klassenbasis in der Parteipräferenz des deutschen Wählers'.

31. D. Ohr and M. Quandt, ‘Parteiidentifikation in Deutschland: Eine empirische Fundierung des Konzepts auf Basis der Theorie Sozialer Identität’, in Schmitt-Beck (ed.), Wählen in Deutschland, p.186.

32. R. Campbell, ‘Values, Trust, and Democracy in Germany: Still in Search of “Inner Unity”?’, European Journal of Political Research 51/5 (2012), pp.646–70.

33. Pappi and Brandenburg, ‘Die Politikvorschläge der Bundestagsparteien', p.296.

34. More precisely, we have information for the three pre-unification elections (1980, 1983 and 1987) and six post-unification elections (1990, 1998, 2002, 2005, 2009 and 2013).

35. Politbarometer surveys provide many more time points but we aimed to study representation when it matters most – when voters decide and governments form.

36. Most election surveys employ a self-placement indicator that provides respondents with 11 categories where 1 constitutes the extreme left; and 11 the extreme right. This is the case in all pre-election surveys, except for the comparative election study in 1990 where respondents use a 10-point scale (with 1 denoting an extreme left position and 10 standing for an extreme right location). In order to account for this variation, we first re-scaled the variables to have a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 1.

37. H.D. Klingemann, ‘Testing the Left–Right Continuum on a Sample of German Voters’, Comparative Political Studies 5/1 (1972), pp.93–106.

38. An alternative would be to use the coding of party manifestos. However, we rely on perceptions of voters because their views matter the most in light of our theoretical questions. What is more, these perceptions are closely related to other indicators of party positions, including those derived from expert surveys and, to a lesser degree, party manifesto data (Robert Rohrschneider and Stephen Whitefield, The Strain of Representation [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012]).

39. We compared the perceived positions of parties within the East and the West in all years (since 1998) and, overall, found few East–West variations in perceptions of party positions. Some variation emerges for smaller parties, for example, for the Linke Party in 2002 where the western electorate locates it closer to the ideological centre (mean = .18) than eastern voters (mean = .11), with a pooled mean for the entire electorate of lr = .16. But this is the only exception to the general rule that differences in perceptions are small. What is more, to the extent that (minor) differences in perceptions of party positions exist across the region, our strategy slightly increases the estimated distance between parties and voters in the East and the West.

40. Dalton and Wattenburg, Parties without Partisans.

41. S. Roβteutscher and P. Scherer, ‘Links und rechts im politischen Raum: eine vergleichende Analyse der ideologischen Entwicklung in Ost- und West-deutschland’, in Bernhard Weβels, Harald Schoen and Oscar W. Gabriel (eds), Wahlen und Wähler: Analysen aus Anlass der Bundestagswahl 2009 (Wiesbaden: Wiesbaden, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2013), pp.380–406.

42. It is worth pointing out that nearly identical patterns emerge on the basis of Allbus data (S. Roβteutscher, ‘Die konfessionell-religiőse Konfliktlinie zwischen Säkularisierung und Mobilisierung’, in Schmitt-Beck (ed.), Wählen in Deutschland, pp.111–33.).

43. For example, the ideological distance of the Union to its western voters in the elections before 2005 is Dist = .17 (East) and Dist = .11 (West). For the 2005 and 2009 elections, the CDU/CSU receives virtually identical scores (Dist = .17 for the East; and Dist = .10 for the West). In 2013, distance to eastern voters is d = .17 and d = .07 to western voters.

44. Pappi, ‘Sozialstruktur, gesellschaftliche Wertorientierungen und Wahlabsicht'; S. Roβteutscher, ‘Die konfessionell-religiöse Konfliktlinie zwischen Säkularisierung und Mobilisierung’, in Schmitt-Beck (ed.), Wählen in Deutschland, pp.111–33.

45. In other words, we computed the median ideology for each time point within the East and the West separately. While the conceptual foundations of a hypothetical median voter are controversial (e.g. Rohrschneider and Whitefield, The Strain of Representation, ch. 2), we focus on the relative distance of parties to median voters in each region, which side-steps several shortcomings of the median voter concept.

46. Another design is to use post-election surveys. However, these are not available for several elections. Further, using pre-election surveys avoids the trap of the well-known tendencies of voters to adjust their expressed party preferences after an election in light of the actual election outcomes (which artificially reduces the ideological distance between parties and voters). In turn, an alternative might be to compare pre-election parliaments and government ideology with pre-election surveys. However, we think it is appropriate to assess representation with a measure that matches the preferences of voters right before an election with the ideologies of institutions resulting from that election.

47. For example, Pappi and Brandenburg, ‘Die Politikvorschläge der Bundestagsparteien'; Campbell, ‘Values, Trust, and Democracy in Germany'; Roβteutscher and Scherer, ‘Links und rechts im politischen Raum'.

48. The 1994 Politbarometer measures party placement (and self-placement) with two questions where the first question gauges whether parties are perceived to be left, centre or right; and a second indicator taps the degree to which parties (and voters) lean to the left or right. This measurement is conceptually so different from a measure based on a single indicator that we decided to exclude this time point from our study.