Thomas Poguntke
Biographic Data
| ID | 1616282 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas Poguntke |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas |
| FAMILY NAME | Poguntke |
| SIGNATURE | POGUNTKE T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Mannheim |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3722-3211 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 65 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 755 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 60 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 5 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Measuring intra-party democracy on a global scale
This research note presents two measures of intra-party democracy (IPD) used on a global scale. We distinguish between assembly-based and plebiscitary IPD which represent two distinct logics of intra-party decision-making. The instrument was developed in the context of the first round of the Political Party Database Project (PPDB) covering 146 parties in 25 countries. It is now applied for the first time to parties in countries on all continents.…
Party leadership selection and party leaders’ powers: Empowered grassroots or leader-centric parties
This paper explores whether parties’ leadership selection procedures carry broader implications for intraparty power. Prior scholarship has documented an ongoing shift in the ways that parties select their leaders, with a growing tendency to include grassroots supporters in such decisions, sometimes described as ‘plebiscitary intraparty democracy’. Some have portrayed moves towards more inclusive leadership selection as part of a more general shi…
Introducing the party-interest group relationships in contemporary democracies datasets
Few existing datasets on parties and interest groups include data from both sides and a wide variety of interest groups and parties. We contribute to filling this gap by making several interconnected new datasets publicly available. The Party-Interest Group Relationships in Contemporary Democracies (PAIRDEM) datasets include cross-national data from three different surveys of (1) central party organizations, (2) legislative party groups, and (3) …
Which candidates benefit from social media? An analysis of the 2021 German federal election
Intra-party decision-making in contemporary Europe: Improving Representation or Ruling With Empty Shells
Political observers agree that parties in European parliamentary democracies are more likely than previously to give party members opportunities to vote in decisions about party policies or personnel. Observers are less agreed about the implications of these apparent procedural trends. Some, including Peter Mair, saw them as evidence of the hollowing-out of party democracies; others have seen them as enhancing citizens’ opportunities for meaningf…
Conceptualizing and measuring party-interest group relationships
Relationships between political parties and interest groups form structures that enable and constrain political action. Yet there is a lack of consensus on what ‘party-group relationships’ means. We propose a conceptualization focusing on ties as means for structured interaction, which is different from sharing or transfer of resources and ideological kinship. Our conceptual discussion suggests that organizational ties form a single yet hierarchi…
It’s no longer the economy, stupid! Issue yield at the 2017 German federal election
This article demonstrates that the issue-yield concept is able to predict the electoral strategies of mainstream and challenger parties at the 2017 German federal election. While the electorate of mainstream parties favour valence issues, the Greens and the AfD can gain more by concentrating on socio-cultural positional issues. Relying on a unique survey covering 17 positional issues and 10 valence issues as well as an analysis of Twitter account…
Organizing Political Parties: Representation, Participation, and Power
This book uses the newly collected Political Party Database to investigate how political parties organize in contemporary parliamentary democracies. It develops new approaches and new measures for testing mid-level theories about the origins and impacts of parties’ organizational differences. Chapters in the first section catalogue cross-party differences in areas such as financial and staffing resources, party relations with societal groups, and…
Parties, Governments and Elites: The Comparative Study of Democracy
Parties, Governments and Elites: The Comparative Study of Democracy
Party rules, party resources and the politics of parliamentary democracies: How parties organize in the 21st century
This article introduces the first findings of the Political Party Database Project, a major survey of party organizations in parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies. The project’s first round of data covers 122 parties in 19 countries. In this article, we describe the scope of the database, then investigate what it tells us about contemporary party organization in these countries, focusing on parties’ resources, structures and internal de…
Citizenship and democracy in an era of crisis: Essays in honour of Jan W. van Deth
Presidentialization and the politics of coalition: Lessons from Germany and Britain
IntroduzioneIn this article, we seek to re-consider the ‘presidentialization of politics’ argument in the light of recent developments in Germany and the United Kingdom. The experiences of coalition government suggestprima faciegrounds for the erosion of the presidentialization process in each country. Germany has operated with a Grand Coalition in which domination of the executive by the Chancellor would seem less likely, whereas the long histor…
The decline of membership-based politics
In one of his last publications, Peter Mair documented how party membership had declined substantially in virtually all European democracies. As his collaborators on this piece, it seems pertinent that we take these findings as a point of departure and discuss what they mean for our understanding of party democracy. After all, the collapse of membership figures calls into question one of the central elements of our conceptualization of representa…
Towards a new party system: The vanishing hold of the catch-all parties in Germany
The results of the 2009 Bundestag election and subsequent Land elections suggest that the German party system is changing fundamentally. A few facts suffice to corroborate this statement: Volatility has now reached levels that were last recorded in the 1950s; turnout in national elections has reached an all-time low; the two large parties have had unprecedentedly poor results in the Bundestag elections while all three smaller parties reached more…
Measuring Intra-Party Democracy: A Guide for the Content Analysis of Party Statutes with Examples from Hungary, Slovakia and Romania
The influence of Europarties on Central and Eastern European partner parties: A Theoretical and Analytical Model
This article provides a comprehensive theoretical model for analysing the influence of European party federations (Europarties) on their Central and Eastern European (CEE) partner parties. It draws on the concepts of Europeanization and party change and is, in principle, applicable to similar processes of party enlargement elsewhere. In the process of their Eastern enlargement, Europarties have searched for suitable CEE partner parties on which t…
The Presidentialisation of Politics Thesis Defended
Journal Article The Presidentialisation of Politics Thesis Defended Get access Paul Webb, Paul Webb * 1Politics, University of Sussex, Falmer, UK *Correspondence: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Thomas Poguntke Thomas Poguntke 2Political Science, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf, Germany Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Parliamentary Affairs…
Going, going, . . . gone? The decline of party membership in contemporary Europe
This article offers an overview of levels of party membership in European democracies at the end of the first decade of the twenty‐first century and looks also at changes in these levels over time, comparing party membership today with figures from both 1980 and the late 1990s. While relying primarily on the direct and individual membership figures as reported by the parties themselves, the fit of the data with survey data is explored and it is c…
Conclusion: Governing under Conditions of Uncertainty
Germany
Deutschland Portal: http://www.deutschland.de Federal Returning officer and election data: http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/index.htm
How European Integration Changes National Parties: Evidence from a 15-Country Study
This article examines the impact of European integration on the balance of power within national political parties. It does this by drawing on the results of a survey of key actors in up to 55 parties in the 15 pre-2004 enlargement member states. The analyses show that, when they are involved in EU-level decision-making, party elites are relatively powerful vis-à-vis their national parties and that in a number of instances their intra-party power…
Germany
Changing Times, Changing Places – Thirty Years of West European Politics
Germany
Party rules, party resources and the politics of parliamentary democracies: How parties organize in the 21st century
This article introduces the first findings of the Political Party Database Project, a major survey of party organizations in parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies. The project’s first round of data covers 122 parties in 19 countries. In this article, we describe the scope of the database, then investigate what it tells us about contemporary party organization in these countries, focusing on parties’ resources, structures and internal de…
The decline of membership-based politics
In one of his last publications, Peter Mair documented how party membership had declined substantially in virtually all European democracies. As his collaborators on this piece, it seems pertinent that we take these findings as a point of departure and discuss what they mean for our understanding of party democracy. After all, the collapse of membership figures calls into question one of the central elements of our conceptualization of representa…
The membership of political parties in European democracies, 1960‐1990
New politics and party systems: The emergence of a new type of party
Building upon theories of new politics, this article suggests an ideal‐typical model of New Politics parties that integrates all important aspects of a political party: organisation, ideology, membership and electorate. It is then demonstrated that for Germany, Sweden, and Austria such a model is necessary in order to distinguish between conservative or centrist 'Green' formations and parties that are genuine products of the 'new politics
Anti‐party sentiment ‐ Conceptual thoughts and empirical evidence: Explorations into a minefield
The literature about ‘crisis of party’ or ‘decline of party’ abounds, but most studies in this genre refer to underlying social changes when trying to explain these phenomena. Normative reservations about political parties have thus far been widely neglected in this debate. This article argues that more attention should be given to the interaction between elite theorizing about, and mass orientations towards, political parties. Even though direct…
The politics of anti‐party sentiment: Introduction1
The organization of a participatory party – the German Greens
The surge of new politics in advanced industrialized nations has led to the emergence of genuine new parties in several countries: the German Green Party is the most prominent example. New kinds of participatory aspirations have had an impact on the organizational structure and the internal political life of the Green Party. This analysis focuses on the party organization, its working mode and internal political culture. While the German Greens a…
It’s no longer the economy, stupid! Issue yield at the 2017 German federal election
This article demonstrates that the issue-yield concept is able to predict the electoral strategies of mainstream and challenger parties at the 2017 German federal election. While the electorate of mainstream parties favour valence issues, the Greens and the AfD can gain more by concentrating on socio-cultural positional issues. Relying on a unique survey covering 17 positional issues and 10 valence issues as well as an analysis of Twitter account…
The Presidentialisation of Politics Thesis Defended
Journal Article The Presidentialisation of Politics Thesis Defended Get access Paul Webb, Paul Webb * 1Politics, University of Sussex, Falmer, UK *Correspondence: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Thomas Poguntke Thomas Poguntke 2Political Science, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf, Germany Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Parliamentary Affairs…
The Europeanisation of national party organisations: A conceptual analysis
The likely effects of the ongoing process of European integration on the internal workings of national political parties have hitherto attracted surprisingly little attention in comparative research. This conceptual article discusses how the increasing relevance of European‐level decision making may have changed the balance of power within national political parties. It identifies two groups of party actors who are most likely to benefit from the…
Green Parties in National Governments: From Protest to Acquiescence
The comparative analysis of the record of Green parties in national governments shows that they have had only limit impact on national policy. No doubt, the march through the institutions has changed the marchers more than the institutions. Furthermore, the Green parties are ill placed to wield much blackmailing power in coalition politics. Still, much depends on their skill to exploit a rather limited room for manoeuvre in order to implement ref…
Conceptualizing and measuring party-interest group relationships
Relationships between political parties and interest groups form structures that enable and constrain political action. Yet there is a lack of consensus on what ‘party-group relationships’ means. We propose a conceptualization focusing on ties as means for structured interaction, which is different from sharing or transfer of resources and ideological kinship. Our conceptual discussion suggests that organizational ties form a single yet hierarchi…
The influence of Europarties on Central and Eastern European partner parties: A Theoretical and Analytical Model
This article provides a comprehensive theoretical model for analysing the influence of European party federations (Europarties) on their Central and Eastern European (CEE) partner parties. It draws on the concepts of Europeanization and party change and is, in principle, applicable to similar processes of party enlargement elsewhere. In the process of their Eastern enlargement, Europarties have searched for suitable CEE partner parties on which t…
Goodbye to movement politics? Organisational adaptation of the German green party
Following the unexpected failure of the West German Green Party to cross the five per cent hurdle in the first all‐German elections the Greens have implemented substantial organisational reform. The electoral decline of the Green Party, which became already visible before unification, can partially be attributed to organisational deficiencies. Some of the organisational principles of grassroots democracy have proven to be incompatible with the ne…
How European Integration Changes National Parties: Evidence from a 15-Country Study
This article examines the impact of European integration on the balance of power within national political parties. It does this by drawing on the results of a survey of key actors in up to 55 parties in the 15 pre-2004 enlargement member states. The analyses show that, when they are involved in EU-level decision-making, party elites are relatively powerful vis-à-vis their national parties and that in a number of instances their intra-party power…
Towards a new party system: The vanishing hold of the catch-all parties in Germany
The results of the 2009 Bundestag election and subsequent Land elections suggest that the German party system is changing fundamentally. A few facts suffice to corroborate this statement: Volatility has now reached levels that were last recorded in the 1950s; turnout in national elections has reached an all-time low; the two large parties have had unprecedentedly poor results in the Bundestag elections while all three smaller parties reached more…
Unconventional Participation in Party Politics: The Experience of the German Greens
The German Green Party, which is one of the most successful Green parties in Western Europe, has not only been efficient in changing the political agenda of the Federal Republic. It has also challenged the conventional way of organizing party politics by institutionalizing a series of organizational principles that are inspired by the ideals of grass-roots democracy. However, despite the ideological appeal of grass-roots democracy to Green sympat…
Intra-party decision-making in contemporary Europe: Improving Representation or Ruling With Empty Shells
Political observers agree that parties in European parliamentary democracies are more likely than previously to give party members opportunities to vote in decisions about party policies or personnel. Observers are less agreed about the implications of these apparent procedural trends. Some, including Peter Mair, saw them as evidence of the hollowing-out of party democracies; others have seen them as enhancing citizens’ opportunities for meaningf…
Introducing the party-interest group relationships in contemporary democracies datasets
Few existing datasets on parties and interest groups include data from both sides and a wide variety of interest groups and parties. We contribute to filling this gap by making several interconnected new datasets publicly available. The Party-Interest Group Relationships in Contemporary Democracies (PAIRDEM) datasets include cross-national data from three different surveys of (1) central party organizations, (2) legislative party groups, and (3) …
Presidentialization and the politics of coalition: Lessons from Germany and Britain
IntroduzioneIn this article, we seek to re-consider the ‘presidentialization of politics’ argument in the light of recent developments in Germany and the United Kingdom. The experiences of coalition government suggestprima faciegrounds for the erosion of the presidentialization process in each country. Germany has operated with a Grand Coalition in which domination of the executive by the Chancellor would seem less likely, whereas the long histor…
Political data in 2005
Still the same with a new name? Bündnis 90/Die Grünen after the fusion
More than two years after German unification, the Greens finally created a joint party organisation with their ally in the east, Bündnis 90. This article analyses the most important junctures on the path towards the new party, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, and defines its most important organisational, ideological and social characteristics. The Achilles heel of the new party, which is more moderate than the Greens of the 1980s, remains their lack of a …
Which candidates benefit from social media? An analysis of the 2021 German federal election
Germany
Alliance 90/The Greens in East Germany: From Vanguard to Insignificance
In the process of German unification, virtually all relevant West German political organizations quickly merged with their respective counterparts in the East. This was usually achieved through the transfer of the West German model to the new all-German organization. As often, the Greens were an exception, because they had, in a way, two counterparts in the East; that is, the East German Green Party and the Alliance 90, which had grown out of the…
New politics and party systems: The emergence of a new type of party
Building upon theories of new politics, this article suggests an ideal‐typical model of New Politics parties that integrates all important aspects of a political party: organisation, ideology, membership and electorate. It is then demonstrated that for Germany, Sweden, and Austria such a model is necessary in order to distinguish between conservative or centrist 'Green' formations and parties that are genuine products of the 'new politics
The organization of a participatory party – the German Greens
The surge of new politics in advanced industrialized nations has led to the emergence of genuine new parties in several countries: the German Green Party is the most prominent example. New kinds of participatory aspirations have had an impact on the organizational structure and the internal political life of the Green Party. This analysis focuses on the party organization, its working mode and internal political culture. While the German Greens a…
The membership of political parties in European democracies, 1960‐1990
The Resurrection of the Christian Democratic Party State
Unconventional Participation in Party Politics: The Experience of the German Greens
The German Green Party, which is one of the most successful Green parties in Western Europe, has not only been efficient in changing the political agenda of the Federal Republic. It has also challenged the conventional way of organizing party politics by institutionalizing a series of organizational principles that are inspired by the ideals of grass-roots democracy. However, despite the ideological appeal of grass-roots democracy to Green sympat…
Between ideology and empirical research: The literature on the German Green Party
Germany
Germany
Goodbye to movement politics? Organisational adaptation of the German green party
Following the unexpected failure of the West German Green Party to cross the five per cent hurdle in the first all‐German elections the Greens have implemented substantial organisational reform. The electoral decline of the Green Party, which became already visible before unification, can partially be attributed to organisational deficiencies. Some of the organisational principles of grassroots democracy have proven to be incompatible with the ne…
Germany
Still the same with a new name? Bündnis 90/Die Grünen after the fusion
More than two years after German unification, the Greens finally created a joint party organisation with their ally in the east, Bündnis 90. This article analyses the most important junctures on the path towards the new party, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, and defines its most important organisational, ideological and social characteristics. The Achilles heel of the new party, which is more moderate than the Greens of the 1980s, remains their lack of a …
Germany
Germany
The politics of anti‐party sentiment: Introduction1
Anti‐party sentiment ‐ Conceptual thoughts and empirical evidence: Explorations into a minefield
The literature about ‘crisis of party’ or ‘decline of party’ abounds, but most studies in this genre refer to underlying social changes when trying to explain these phenomena. Normative reservations about political parties have thus far been widely neglected in this debate. This article argues that more attention should be given to the interaction between elite theorizing about, and mass orientations towards, political parties. Even though direct…
Germany
Germany
Alliance 90/The Greens in East Germany: From Vanguard to Insignificance
In the process of German unification, virtually all relevant West German political organizations quickly merged with their respective counterparts in the East. This was usually achieved through the transfer of the West German model to the new all-German organization. As often, the Greens were an exception, because they had, in a way, two counterparts in the East; that is, the East German Green Party and the Alliance 90, which had grown out of the…
Germany
Parteiorganisation im Wandel: Gesellschaftliche Verankerung und Organisatorische Anpassung Im Europäischen Vergleich
Germany
The German Party System: Eternal Crisis
Ever since the early years of the Federal Republic, the German debate about political parties and the party system has been almost obsessed with the theme of crisis. Contrary to what seems to be the dominant view from within Germany, this article argues that, by and large, the German party system has performed well. Gordon Smith's centrality thesis can explain why this has been the case. However, there are indications that the future may not be s…
Introduction: Beyond the Politics of Centrality
Germany
Party Organizational Linkage: Parties Without Firm Social Roots?
Parties live in diverse worlds. They live in the sphere of the state, largely controlling the selection of political personnel of all important institutions of the state. Some critics have warned that, once in government, they have virtually become the state (Katz and Mair 1995: 22). At the same time, they remain voluntary social organizations, whose viability depends also on their roots in society. It is exactly this dual role, as state actors a…
Political science (52 works) · Law (47 works) · Politics (47 works) · Sociology (44 works) · Law (36 works) · Computer Science (32 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (31 works) · Political economy (27 works) · Democracy (21 works) · Citation (20 works)