Author:
Hough Dan,Koß Michael,Olsen Jonathan
Reference23 articles.
1. Sabine Hoffmann, ‘Die Picknick-Politikerinnen’, Der Spiegel, 20 December 2002. Available at
http://www.gesine-loetzsch.de
/kat_echo_detail.php?v003D45 (viewed on 18 December 2006).
2. A party is entitled to the status of ‘parliamentary party’ if it polls 5 per cent of the popular vote. If it polls less than 5 per cent of the vote but still manages to secure parliamentary representation by winning three (or more) parliamentary constituencies directly, then it has the status of a ‘parliamentary group’. Parliamentary groups are not accorded the same set of rights and privileges that parliamentary parties are. The PDS’s MdBs in the 1994–98 Bundestag possessed this status as, despite polling 4.4 per cent of the vote, the PDS sent 30 MdBs to parliament as it won four constituency mandates (all of them in eastern Berlin). If a party does not win three mandates (as was the case in 2002, when the PDS won two, Berlin Marzahn-Hellersdorf (Petra Pau) and Berlin Lichtenberg-Hohenschönhausen (Gesine Lötzsch)), then they receive no surplus seats and simply retain the constituency seats that they have won directly. For more information on Germany’s electoral system, see Geoffrey Roberts, German Electoral Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 11–26.
3. For an excellent analysis of events surrounding the 2002 federal election see Ian King, ‘A Damned Close-Run Thing: The German General Election of 2002’, Debatte, 10 (2), 2002: 123–139.
4. Gysi had suffered serious health problems through 2002 and 2003 when he had a brain tumour and two heart attacks, and it was by no means sure that he would be able to work as enthusiastically for the PDS cause as he had in previous years. See Constanze von Bullion, ‘Wandlungen eines Dampfplauderers’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 3 June 2005. Available on
http://www.sueddeutsche.de
/,tt111/deutschland/artikel/258/54204/ (viewed on 18 December 2006).
5. The most detailed and sophisticated German-language study of the PDS’s development remains, curiously, the (now decidedly dated) analysis produced by Gero Neugebauer and Richard Stöss. See Gero Neugebauer and Richard Stöss, Die PDS: Geschichte, Organisation, Wähler, Konkurrenten ( Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 1996 )