Kleine Gemeinden in der kommunalpolitischen Forschung: Eine Fallstudie in Bayern

Abstract

Analysing local elections and local party competition is rarely the focus of political science research . In the few cases where this does happen, it is primarily the large cities or mayoral elections that are at the centre of scholars’ research interest . In our article, we shed light on the political variety in 1,063 small municipalities with fewer than 3,000 inhabitants in the 2020 Bavarian municipal elections and describe both the political supply and the effects of this offer by parties on voter turnout . Our results show that the political offer to citizens is dominated by small parties and independent local lists . Only the CSU managed to run in more than half of the municipalities . In addition, we demonstrate that the larger the municipality and the greater the number of municipal council seats to be allocated, the greater the number of political groups contesting the elections . Furthermore, a larger polit- ical offering also led to a higher voter turnout in the corresponding municipalities than in those municipalities with a smaller political offering .