Auswirkungen staatlicher Parteienfinanzierung und parlamentarischer Repräsentanz bei Landtagswahlen: Eine Regressions-Diskontinuitäts-Analyse

This paper examines the effects of public party financing and parliamentary representation on political competition in German state elections. For this purpose, a regression discontinuity analysis was conducted on a Bayesian basis. If a party exceeds the threshold of 1% of valid votes, above which it is entitled to public funds, the probability of running again in the next election increases from 60% to 82%. Parties that narrowly overcome the 5% threshold and thus gain parliamentary representation have a 14-percentage-point higher chance of being (re)represented in parliament at the next election compared to parties that narrowly fail to reach the threshold. When robustness tests are carried out, this effect is reduced to around six percentage points. The two effects are not directly comparable, as they are only valid in the vicinity of the respective threshold, and different dependent variables are considered. Nevertheless, the results indicate that the influence of public party funding in state elections is more significant than that of the 5% threshold. In contrast to the probability of recandidacy and reentry, there is no significant effect on the share of the vote in the next election at either the 1% threshold or the 5% threshold.