Electoral agreement
An electoral agreement is an agreement between various competing political parties in the run-up to an election , in which agreements on candidacies ( constituency agreements ) and the election campaign ( election campaign agreements) are made. In countries with proportional representation are combined lists a comparable instrument.
Constituency agreement
In majority voting, constituency agreements are common. The strongest candidate in the constituency wins the mandate, the votes for the other parties no longer play a role. In constituency agreements, parties therefore agree to renounce the candidacy for controversial constituencies in which they themselves cannot count on becoming the strongest on their own. Instead, the party calls for the election of another party’s candidate, thereby lifting him into parliament. In return, the other party renounces its candidate in other constituencies and calls for the election of the contracting party's candidate there.
Constituency agreements are usually signed by parties whose core beliefs share common ground. Otherwise the willingness of voters to elect candidates from another party for tactical reasons would be low.
Constituency agreements are not legally enforceable; they are based on trust. For example, the mandate of the Reichstag delegate Wilhelm Kahl was attacked in 1920 with the argument that there was a different election agreement. However, the electoral examination court stated:
"Electoral agreements are not to be taken into account for the assessment of the allocation of the seats, they are of an internal nature"
Constituency agreement in the Federal Republic of Germany
In the Federal Republic of Germany constituency agreements play a subordinate role, since the character of proportional representation predominates. The main exception was the federal elections in 1953 and 1957 . Since the German party would probably not jump the five percent hurdle , the CDU renounced candidates in a number of constituencies and called for the election of the constituency candidates of the DP. This was able to move into the Bundestag due to the electoral district mandates achieved.
Electoral agreement at state level
The subject of an electoral agreement can also be the waiver of full elections. The right-wing extremist parties, the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) and the German People's Union (DVU), agreed in the so-called Germany Pact that they would not participate in the state elections in Saxony and Brandenburg on September 19, 2004 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Judgment of June 30, 1923; quoted from: Stephan Meyer: The judicial electoral review court at the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic - Institution, proceedings, performance, 2010, ISBN 3832526773 , pp. 77-78, online
- ↑ Wolfgang C. Müller, Kaare Strom (ed.): Coalition governments in Western Europe: Education, working methods and termination, 1997, ISBN 3854362412 , pp. 56, 98