JOURNAL ARTICLE
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Neue Parteien, Skandale und Alltägliches in Landtagswahlkämpfen – Thementreiber der Inneren Sicherheit
Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung, Vol. 84 (2015), Iss. 2 : pp. 45–68
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Mathias Bug, DIW Berlin – Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung
Eric van Um, GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften
Abstract
Topics around security are a central field of political discourse in democracies – in the German case federalism plays a characterizing role. This article is a first trial to measure policy positions and its dynamics within the policy field of crime and internal security in Germany. The salience of the different issues in party manifestos on state and federal level is analyzed. The comparative approach is based on a comprehensive analysis of the party manifestos of parties that were elected into federal parliaments successfully between September 2011 (House of Representatives election in Berlin) and September 2014 (Parliament elections in Brandenburg and Thuringia). Results show the substantial inequality of the relevance different topics of internal security play. Relevant differences become apparent within political parties as well as across the German Länder. Still, the contents of parties" programs seem to be influenced by a number of rather generalizable factors. During the observation period, topics gained timeliness for two reasons: On the one hand it appears that emerging and presumed single-issue parties (the Pirate Party and the AfD) can „set" topics for the already established parties that seek after a similar clientele within the electorate. On the other hand, in particular the NSU-scandal had the power to bring up issues that are normally avoided in party manifestos, such as issues around the secret services. This area was not explicitly covered by any political party before the NSU-scandal. However, these German-wide scandals do not need to be salient in all manifestos. The NSU-scandal, for example, had only a regional impact.