The Impact of Institutional and Financial Constraints on Party Behaviour in Local Politics

2024/09/11 by Martin Groß, Dominic Nyhuis, Sebastian Block +1 · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Gender Politics and Representation #Political Influence and Corporate Strategies

paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/spsr.12628

openalex publication_date 2024/09/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/09

Abstract

Abstract Political parties are not free to choose which issues to focus on in parliament. At the national level, it is mostly economic and societal problem pressures which impact parties' issue attention. In this paper, we argue that at lower levels of multilevel governance systems, parties are additionally limited by institutional and financial constraints beyond their decision‐making competencies, which should impact their issue attention. Based on a novel dataset of local parties' parliamentary questions regarding 19 policy areas in 35 German local councils between 2011 and 2020, we demonstrate the constraining effect of institutional and economic conditions on party behaviour: parties are aware of the institutional constraints and devote more attention to issues where municipalities have more legal leeway, but this effect is moderated by the financial constraints that local communities face.

Citations

• Valence as Macro-Competence: An Analysis of Mood in Party Competence Evaluations in Great Britain
• Coalition Policy-Making under Constraints: Examining the Role of Preferences and Institutions
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Discussions

• @martingross.bsky.social @donyhu.bsky.social @sebastianjblock.bsky.social & @jvelimsky.bsky.social deal with issue emphasis 💡Key findings: 1️⃣More attention to issues where municipalities have more [bsky, 3 points, 1 comments]

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