Parliamentary party
As parliamentary parties by one to dial in a national parliament sent political parties called. Sometimes the term also includes parties in state parliaments or other regional parliaments.
A counter-term to parliamentary parties are the small parties , whose parliamentary representation often fails due to threshold clauses .
Party spectrum and political stability
To protect against a fragmentation of the political spectrum and for the purpose of forming stable governments based on parliamentary majorities , many democratic constitutions have a threshold clause which provides that parties in elections must receive a certain “percentage hurdle” of around three to five percent of the valid votes cast, to be represented in parliament. The threshold clause is intended to prevent many small parties from making Parliament's ability to work more difficult, and to prevent small groups of voters representing individual interests from exerting a disproportionate influence on political events as “ tipping the scales ”. If a candidate party does not achieve a certain percentage of votes , its share of the vote is not taken into account and the potential number of mandates goes to the political competitors who have overcome the threshold clause. As an alternative or in addition to a threshold clause, the electoral law of many states states the possibility of entering parliament through one or more basic mandates despite a number of votes below the threshold clause .
Formation of government and coalitions
In democratic systems, government is usually formed on the basis of negotiations between the strongest parliamentary party and the other parties represented in parliament. The parties have the goal of agreeing on a joint approach for the duration of one legislative period in government negotiations. Naturally, it is easier to form a government between parties that have a similar political orientation and are on the same side of the political spectrum:
- bourgeois or moderate right-wing parties (in addition to citizen forums, above all Christian democrats or Christian socialists , conservatives and liberals )
- Social democracy and moderate left parties, socialists , left liberals , most of the “green” parties
Large coalitions of conservatives and social democrats unite political approaches from a broader social spectrum and are therefore capable of more far-reaching reforms than governments with a narrow majority. In countries with few parliamentary parties, such grand coalitions are often in power for many years without interruption. In Germany, the term “grand coalition” traditionally denotes an alliance between the CDU or CSU and the SPD ; in Austria it means a federal or state government formed by the ÖVP and the SPÖ . In Switzerland , cooperation between the four largest parliamentary parties has traditionally developed in the form of a concordance government .
The parties not represented in the government form the opposition . Whether they act individually in everyday political life or form opposition alliances, such as for a vote of no confidence , depends on the country in question, its political culture and the respective topic.
Other democratic forms of government
A government without a parliamentary majority ( minority government ) can function successfully if it is tolerated by one or more other parties , either tacitly or after negotiations ; these parties then create a majority for the minority formation in the formation of a government or in individual votes. In so-called center-left or center-right constellations, this indirect support is often the prerequisite for the political stability of a government. A minority government can easily be overthrown by a motion of no confidence if the tolerant party withdraws support from the government.
If a parliamentary party has an absolute majority in mandates, it is able to form a sole government . In recent times, however, such governments have become increasingly rare; In the 16 states of the Federal Republic of Germany there has been only one single government since 2015 ( CSU , Bavaria ).
If the share of the vote of the largest parliamentary party is below 50 percent of the mandate, it often tries to form the government with another party that functions as a "junior partner". In the negotiations, the smaller party can in many cases successfully bring more of its political goals into the government program than its share of the vote.
Small parties in parliaments
Small parties occasionally overcome the threshold clause because they convince a sufficient number of voters by filling unusual or current topics, even though these parties only have a limited or specific voter potential. As a result of the EU expansion in May 2004, for example, the right-wing extremist NPD succeeded in moving into the state parliaments of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saxony , as they deliberately exploited voters' fears and reservations about the free movement of citizens of the new EU member states in their election campaigns.
In some countries, the electoral code allows for small but similarly oriented political parties to form electoral alliances . In Italy or Russia , well-known politicians usually act as “ figureheads ” for such groups.
Some small parties can make the leap into parliament if they have one or more attractive candidates or a popular party leader . More recently, the Statt Party (Hamburg, 1993–1997), the Liberal Forum (Austria, 1994–1999) and the Rule of Law Party (Hamburg, 2001–2004) have succeeded in doing so .