Voters and voting in multilevel systems – an introduction

Abstract

This Special Issue, ‘Voters and Voting in Multilevel Systems’, is a contribution to a better understanding of the functioning and logics of the present-day German electoral system, but its findings and consequences stretch beyond the German case. After all, Germany is ideally suited for studying multilevel voting and the interdependences and mutual repercussions of multilayer electoral systems. The Special Issue takes the challenges and changes in voting behaviour as a starting point and searches for links and causal relationships between levels. Overall, it has two major goals: first, to examine how (increasing) volatility in voting behaviour and declining participation rates manifest themselves at all layers of the multilevel system, possibly amplifying each other; second, to turn the usual perspective on its head by examining the impact of second-order elections and vote choices on parties’ fortunes and electoral outcomes at the national level.