Factional change - an underestimated phenomenon?

from Oliver Kannenberg, Sarah Ketteniß and Lorenz Schleyer

DOI: 10.36206/BP2023.02

The debate about a potential split of the so-called Wagenknecht camp within the Left Party has been raging for several months and recently reached its temporary climax with the party executive's demand that Sahra Wagenknecht should resign her seat in the Bundestag. For some time now, the planned break between some of the Left Party MPs and their parliamentary group has been more or less openly rumoured, and the party now wants to pre-empt this. MPs leaving their parliamentary group in the middle of an election period is still a rarity in Germany, making a parliamentary split all the more so. Nevertheless, a new IParl dataset on changes in parliamentary group membership at federal and state level shows that one or more MPs have (un)voluntarily left their parliamentary group in almost every parliamentary term over the past three decades.

The most important facts in brief:

• Group changes occur more frequently than expected. Particularly in young, less institutionalised parties and parliamentary groups, there are many changes of group affiliation in the first few years of parliamentary presence.
• Since reunification, there have been changes of parliamentary group in the German Bundestag and the Berlin House of Representatives in every electoral term and every parliamentary group. There have been far fewer cases in the state parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia.
• In recent years, AfD MPs in particular have (had to) leave their parliamentary group. Most of them have subsequently remained non-attached.