Can legislative speech unveil conflict between coalition parties?:An empirical illustration based on two examples in the German Bundestag

Bergmann, Henning, Geese, Lucas ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5085-5029, Schwemmer, Carsten and Koß, Christian (2026) Can legislative speech unveil conflict between coalition parties?:An empirical illustration based on two examples in the German Bundestag. In: Democracy at the Crossroads – Challenges for Governance and Representation. Taylor and Francis - Balkema, pp. 258-283. ISBN 9781032950327

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Abstract

Stark between-party conflict in coalition governments can lead to legislative gridlock, cabinet instability and early dissolution of parliament. This chapter provides a text-as-data approach to capturing legislative conflict between coalition parties dynamically across the electoral term. We employ topic modelling and the Wordscores scaling method to estimate disagreement between government parties in legislative debates over time in Germany. Two German coalition governments were faced with votes of confidence in 2001 and 2005, specifically Chancellor Schröder’s first and second cabinets, which were composed of Social Democrats and Greens. We assume two specific policy areas (‘defence’ and ‘labour market/social policy’) to be substantial in describing the main conflict lines that led to life-threatening government crises. Our findings suggest that analysing speech across the electoral term contributes to the understanding of inter-party conflict dynamics. The integration of such measures into the empirical modelling of coalition governance or cabinet stability provides fruitful avenues for future research.

Item Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	Publisher Copyright: © 2026 selection and editorial matter, Jorge M. Fernandes and Javier Martínez-Cantó; individual chapters, the contributors.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	general social sciences,general arts and humanities ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3300
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research University of East Anglia Research Groups/Centres > Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
Related URLs:	https://www.scopus.com/pages/publication...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	20 Jul 2026 15:38
Last Modified:	20 Jul 2026 15:38
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103931
DOI:	10.4324/9781003660248-15

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