Two Patterns of Opposition: Party Group Interaction in the Bavarian State Parliament

Abstract

Most research on parliamentary opposition focuses on constitutional and institutional aspects. This article argues that these approaches are limited in explaining differences between opposition parties. A case study of the Bavarian State Parliament supports the assumption that complex patterns of a number of factors, such as individual party groups’ ideology and history, their members’ socio-demographic background, and their informal rules of engagement, influence the way opposition parties behave. The study shows distinctive differences between the appearance and the strategies employed to influence the majority's decision-making. The Social Democrats, a traditional mass party with over 40 years in opposition, focused on a strategy of professional, subject-oriented cooperation within parliament. The Greens chose confrontational power policies that had their main effect outside parliament. This stands in line with the party's origin in grassroots movements and its culture of conflict resolution. The particular way of how party identities and policies coincide with the preference of one opposition strategy over another indicates that historic and socio-cultural factors are highly relevant for parliamentary behaviour.

Keywords:

• parliamentary opposition
• parliamentary party groups
• parliamentary behaviour
• opposition strategies
• Bavaria

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, Grant Number PTA-026-27-1803. The article was originally written for the Eighth Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians, Wroxton College, Oxfordshire, 26–27 July 2008. The author would like to thank the conference organisers for the opportunity to present this article and the participants for their useful questions, suggestions and comments. Particular thanks are due to the journal's anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Notes

Kirchheimer (1980, p. 410) distinguishes between parliamentary opposition, opposition as principle and a decaying of opposition as a consequence of classical parliamentary cartel agreements. Oberreuter (1975) differs between issue-oriented ad hoc opposition, cooperative opposition and competitive opposition.

Amongst other results their extensive qualitative and quantitative analysis of the behaviour of members of the Austrian National Parliament shows that while members of the governing parties focus on committee work, the first preference of the opposition MPs was the use of questions in plenary sessions. In particular, the two smallest opposition parties, the Greens and the Liberal Forum, represented in parliament by nine MPs, prioritised party-specific policy areas over constituency work.

See Russell (2008), who refers to Norton (2003) as the main trigger for her research.

Following Pitkin's book on The Concept of Representation (1972), there has been a widespread discussion whether female MPs would be automatically ‘acting for’ women and if a ‘critical mass’ of women in parliament would change politics. For an overview and discussion of the most recent findings, see Celis and Childs (2008).

The 2003 elections to the state parliament are symptomatic of the opposition's limited chances to win: the slogan used by the Bavarian SPD, ‘Macht braucht Kontrolle’ (power needs control), sent clear signals that the party did not seek to come into government but aimed to prevent a two-thirds CSU majority. The 2008 slogan ‘Bayern, aber gerechter’ (Bavaria, but more just) underlined the party's new strategy of acknowledging that the CSU's political achievements cannot simply be condemned as failures – though there would be room for (social-democratic) improvement.

References to interviews consist of a running number, the date the interview was carried out, and an acronym indicating the partisanship and the line numbers in the transcript. For instance in note 18 below, 01-290101-B90/Grüne, 80ff thus refers to a statement made by interviewee number one, a member of Bündnis 90/Grüne (Greens) on 29 January 2001, from lines 80ff. of the transcript.

Governmental files were not available due to the general 30-year restrictions; access to internal material produced by the party groups was limited.

Though the merger of the former West German Green Party with the East German Civil Rights movement Bündnis 90, as formed in 1993, officially carries the name Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, its members in the Bavarian State Parliament keep referring to themselves as ‘Greens’.

Worth mentioning is, for example, the outstanding position of the First Minister who, opposed to his colleagues in the other German Länder, cannot be forced out of office by a motion of no confidence (Mielke 1971, Rausch 1977, Ender and Schultze 1991, p. 154). Also unique within the German federal system was Bavaria's second chamber, the Senate, with 60 members chosen amongst representatives of trade, industry, agriculture, and religious and cultural groups. As the public felt it was outdated and did not promote democratic decision-making, it successfully petitioned in February 1998 for its abolition and the Bavarian Senate ceased to exist in 2000.

Art 25/1 BV.

In the CSU 57 per cent of males and 50 per cent of females were over 50. For the SPD these figures were 68 per cent for male and 41 per cent for female MBSPs.

Eight MBSPs had left the State Parliament prematurely; one had died. As their biographies as well as those of their successors were included, the number of biographies analysed comes to n = 214 (CSU: 120 + 4 successors; SPD: 70 + 3; Greens: 14 + 2; Independent: 1).

Amongst the CSU party group members, at least 66 per cent had previous experience as councillors, a further 11 per cent as mayors and 3 per cent as district administrators. However, as the biographies of most frontbenchers only highlight their previous posts within government, but fail to mention any career development outside parliament, it can safely be assumed that the actual numbers should read higher (own calculations, based on data provided in Bayerischer Landtag, 1996).

Among the 16 MBSPs representing the Greens during the 13th session, three were not party members.

Even the CSU's landslide loss of over 17 per cent of votes in the 2008 election that forced the CSU to enter a coalition government for the first time in 47 years, did not revive the SPD. The 18.6 per cent of votes the party managed to attract marks yet another historical lowest point on the Social Democrat's long list of lost elections in Bavaria. URL: http://www.landtagswahl2008.bayern.de/ – official result (accessed 23 January 2009).

The 1994 member figures for Bavaria were SPD: 104.526 SPD, CSU: 176.250 CSU, Greens: 5.555 (Kießling 2004, p. 74).

Most prominently, Bavaria's capital, Munich, has (apart from the years 1978–1984) been continuously governed by an SPD major since 1948.

Compare interview 01-290101-B90/Grüne, 80ff. who explained: ‘Meeting in partisan armament limits your leeway. One needs to get started ahead of that […] possibly even before issues are discussed in committees […] Once the committee sessions are over you move on to the parliamentary part that will be slug out in front of the public and this narrows your influence. If the governing MBSPs have told you three times already in committee that they will not follow your suggestion and if they have underlined this with their own point of view they are not prepared to lose their face in public. You can't expect wonders in plenary session.’

Peter Raschke and Jens Kalke, University of Hamburg, who for the summer term 1999 ran a research seminar comparing plenary sessions in all German State Parliaments during the first half of 1996, provided this additional data.

Interview 05-050201 SPD, 274ff.

Compare interviews 01-290101 B90/Grüne, 188f.; 09-150201 SPD, 73ff., 11-190201 SPD, 120ff.

Compare interview 04-010201 CSU, 198ff.

Compare interviews 04-010201 CSU, 168ff.; 07-150201 CSU, 218ff., 13-120301 CSU, 248ff.

Compare interviews 07-150201 CSU, 227ff., 05-050201 SPD, 264ff.

Compare interviews 05-050201 SPD, 393ff., 18-240401 SPD, 202ff.

Compare interview 18-240401 SPD, 200ff.

Interview 05-050201 SPD, 385ff.

Interview 05-050201 SPD, 393ff.

Interview 05-050201 SPD, 500ff.

Compare interview 21-151001 SPD, 239ff.

Votes where MBSPs can decide independently without taking their party group's guidance on a topic into account are very rare. Interviewees 21-151001 SPD (line 315) and 01-290101 B90/Grüne (line 574) pointed out that if a topic was highly controversial within the party group there would be general agreement to try not to discuss this topic with the other party groups if possible.

Interview 10-160201 CSU, 263f.

See interviews 08-150201 SPD, 31ff; 18-240401 SPD, 291ff, 303; 09-150201 SPD, 6ff.

In a further legislative procedure relating to genetic engineering, the SPD party group had decided to support the Green's initiative instead of submitting a proposal of its own.

See interview 21-151001 SPD, 315.

See interview 17-190301 B90/Grüne, 225ff.

Interviews 04-012001 CSU, 194ff.; 08-150201 SPD, 31ff; 18-240401 SPD, 291ff, 303; 09-150201 SPD, 6ff.

Interview 08-150201 SPD, 187ff.

According to Raschke (1993, p. 203), having several competing wings was seen as a healthy sign of the party's plurality, heterogeneity and inner party democracy.

During the session, Green MBSPs for example protested outside parliament against final storage of radioactive waste and blockaded a slaughterhouse where cattle, potentially infected with BSE, were culled.

Having free access for all Green MBSPs to the party group's media office was one of the key issues, which ignited a major internal and public discussion on the party group's opposition strategy in 1996. See Steinack (2007, p. 81ff.) and ‘Fraktionschef und Pressesprecher beziehen Prügel. Die Landtags-Grünen spucken Gift und Galle’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 4 October 1996.