This book analyses the legislative behaviour of political parties in parliamentary systems between programmatic and opportunistic motivation for conflict and cooperation. It focuses on three specific questions:
- 1) the explanation of conflict or cooperation between government and opposition parties;
- 2) the explanation of the conflict level in coalition governments;
- 3) the effect of congruence or incongruence between coalition governments on federal and state level on the conflict level in coalition governments when implementing federal laws in the German Länder.
The empirical basis is a comprehensive data set on law-making processes in five German states between 1990 and 2013.
