Democracy at the Crossroads – Challenges for Governance and Representation: Essays in Honour of Thomas Saalfeld for Governance and Representation Essays in Honour of Thomas Saalfeld

Part I: Delegation Models of Representation

Chapter 1. Constitutional Rigidity Matters: A Veto Players Approach?

George Tsebelis

Chapter 2. From selection to oversight? Parliament and government relations in France and Norway over more than a century.

Olivier Rozenberg

Chapter 3. The European Parliament as a Principal: The evolution of inter-institutional oversight in the European Union.

Amie Kreppel and Murad Gafarov

Chapter 4. Legislative Assemblies and Legislative Roles.

Kaare Strom and Shane Martin

Chapter 5. The Confidence Relationship between Parliament and Government.

Reuven Y. Hazan and Gaya S. Sigavi

Chapter 6. Elite loyalty, legislative productivity or constituency service: Where lies the reward in intra-party competition in Ghana?

Martin Acheampong

Chapter 7. Parliamentary Norms –a tool of the party group leaders?

Stefanie Bailer

Chapter 8. The Renaissance of Roll-Calls Votes in Austria’s Second Republic.

Marcelo Jenny and Wolfgang C. Muller

Chapter 9. Aspects of Artificial Intelligence in Parliamentary Governance.

Fotios Fitsilis

Part II: Government Formation, Duration, and Termination

Chapter 10. The Vote of Confidence and Executive Bargaining Power on environmental protection.

Petra Schleiter and Georgina Evans

Chapter 11. Polarization as a challenge to parliamentary governance.

Hanna Back and Royce Carroll

Chapter 12. Portfolio Design in Germany: How coalition governments (re-)shape ministerial jurisdictions and what this tells us about coalition politics.

Ulrich Sieberer and David Schmuck

Chapter 13. Can legislative speech unveil conflict between coalition parties? An empirical illustration based on two examples in the German Bundestag.

Henning Bergmann, Lucas Geese, Carsten Schwemmer and Christian Koß

Chapter 14. It is possible because I have already seen it – How Sub-National Coalitions Affect Voters’ Expectations about Government Compositions on the National Level.

Daniel Hohmann and Maria Thurk

Chapter 15. The electoral consequences of coalition bargaining.

Heike Kluver and Svenja Krauss

Chapter 16. Parliamentary Institutions and Portfolio Allocation in Coalition Governments.

Bjorn Erik Rasch, Bjorn Mo Forum and Cristina Bucur

Part III: Minority representation

Chapter 17. Who wants descriptive representation, and why?

Claudia Landwehr and Armin Schafer

Chapter 18. Career facilitators, springboards and allies: Examining what factors foster the careers of politicians of immigrant ancestry.

Laura Morales, Carles Pamies, and Claire Vincent-Mory

Chapter 19. Out and Loud? LGBT Representation in the Parliamentary Arena.

Javier Martinez-Canto, Jorge M. Fernandes and Edgar Chicurel

Chapter 20. Who likes descriptive representation, why, and with what implications? The Beliefs of Parliamentary Candidates in German Election Campaigns.

Thomas Zittel

Chapter 21. Patterns behind the termination of careers of immigrant-origin MPs in the German Bundestag.

Andreas M. Wust and Henning Bergmann

Chapter 22. Deracialised inclusion: from explaining ethnic minorities under-representation to explaining the new descriptive representation.

Maria Sobolewska

Chapter 23. Diverse Candidates – Diverse Positions? Party Line Conformity in Campaign Positions by Female and Immigrant Origin Candidates for the German Bundestag.

Lukas Hohendorf, Micaela Grosmann and Julia Schulte-Cloos

Chapter 24. Does protest affect MP roll-call votes in Germany?

Danieal Bischof

Part IV: Democratic Anxieties

Chapter 25. Permanent crises, the politics of the Merkel governments and the rise of right-wing populism in Germany.

Reimut Zohlnhofer

Chapter 26. The potential of extremist voters in Germany.

Sebastian Jungkunz and Marc Helbling

Chapter 27. Legislative conflict dimensions on environmental protection.

Tamaki Ohmura and David Willumsen

Chapter 28. Conflicts about the German Energiewende as a threat for democracy?

Simon Fink

Biography

Jorge M. Fernandes is a Ramon y Cajal Fellow at the Institute of Public Goods and Policies, CSIC, Madrid. He holds a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute (2013). After graduation, Jorge moved to Bamberg, where he worked under the unabridged mentorship of Thomas Saalfeld. In 2017, Jorge took a position as Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon. His research interests include representation, electoral systems, political parties, legislatures, and coalitions. His work has appeared in journals such as Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political Research, Journal of European Public Policy, and Legislative Studies Quarterly, among many others. He is the co-editor of The Politics of Legislative Debates (Oxford University Press, 2021) and The Oxford Handbook of Portuguese Politics (Oxford University Press, 2023). He has held visiting positions at UC San Diego, Center for European Studies, Harvard University, and Robert Schuman Centre (EUI). From 2025, Jorge is the PI of the ERC Consolidator Grant "SEE: Representation in Proportional Electoral Systems.

Javier Martínez-Cantó is a Cesar Nombela Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Goods and Policies, CSIC, Madrid. He holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Bamberg (2021), which he developed under the outstanding supervision of Thomas Saalfeld. He has also worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Konstanz, IBEI, and the University of Salamanca. During the 2023–2024 academic year, Javier was the inaugural Ramon Arences Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies. His research interests include political parties, legislative behaviour, political representation, political competition, and federalism. His work has appeared in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Party Politics, among many others. He has held short-term visiting positions at Princeton University (2018) and the University of Vienna (2022).