Mehr als immer nur dagegen? Die legislative Agenda grüner Parteien in Deutschland und Österreich in Zeiten Großer Koalitionen

Abstract

In order to analyze which topics are used by the German and Austrian Green parties when proposing bills in times of Grand Coalitions, we use data from a content analysis of all bills these parties proposed from 2007-2008 and 2013-2017 based on the German version of the Comparative Agendas Project Master Codebook . In addition, we define green topics as issues that are named in the respective party programs . In Germany, we observe how an oppositional party under pressure goes on to diversify its own thematic profile as well as to increase the share of bills that focus on genuine green topics . This development, however, is not a general trend among green parties . While the share of bills with green topics increased in Germany after the nuclear phase out in 2011, it slightly decreased in Austria . In both countries we observe an increase in thematic variability of the bills dealing with green top­ics . This could be treated as evidence that chanceless bills are increasingly used for creating a diverse but genuinely green profile .