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Hierarchical, Decentralized, or Something Else? Opposition Networks in the German Bundestag
Author(s) -
Metz Thomas,
Jäckle Sebastian
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
legislative studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.728
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1939-9162
pISSN - 0362-9805
DOI - 10.1111/lsq.12122
Subject(s) - opposition (politics) , parliament , homophily , german , politics , political science , construct (python library) , political economy , session (web analytics) , sociology , law , advertising , computer science , social science , business , archaeology , history , programming language
Members of the German parliament may force government to publicly answer questions by issuing minor interpellations (kleine Anfragen). We use 3,608 interpellations from the session 2009–13 that have been signed by authoring and supporting members to construct the social network of support relations among members within the three opposition parties. We find that parties differ markedly in terms of internal structure. While social democrats organize hierarchically, Greens cooperate horizontally. The network for socialist Linke in contrast shows signs of homophily and social segregation. Our approach yields a novel perspective on intraparty politics in parliamentary systems which are notoriously difficult to analyze.