Dynamics of Government–Opposition Parliamentary Relations and Public Attitudes

Research question/goal: 

This project investigates the trade-offs between conflict and cooperation from both the parties’ and the voters’ perspectives. I will first study how changes in public opinion inputs—through polls and subnational electoral results—affect parties’ interactions in parliament. I will then turn to the effects of said interactions on voters’ attitudes toward the opposition parties as well as the democratic system as a whole.

I will create a broad comparative dataset combining information from official sources and existing datasets on legislative votes, parliamentary speeches, electoral results, and polling data for all parties in the studied parliaments. This dataset will be combined with CSES, ESS, and Eurobarometer survey data. Finally, a cross-national survey experiment will be conducted to identify the micro-mechanisms underlying voters’ responses to party activity.

Current stage: 

We are currently collecting data on parliamentary votes and speeches and preparing them for analysis. Based on the data on parliamentary votes, which are not yet complete, two manuscripts have been (co-)authored, one on the effect of conflict between the government and the opposition on satisfaction with democracy and another on its effect on turnout. Work has also begun on a third paper, suggesting a new concept: government¬–opposition affective polarisation.

Fact sheet

Funding: 
DFG
Duration: 
2022 to 2026
Status: 
ongoing
Data Sources: 
Existing sources/survey data and survey experiment
Geographic Space: 
Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Israel, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and UK

Publications

Conference Presentations

Tuttnauer, Or (2023): Government-opposition relations in the German state legislatures and citizens’ attitudes. [8th Conference of the Standing Group on Parliaments (ECPR), Vienna, July 06th to July 08th, 2023] more