German Bundestag Speeches and Minister Appointments 1961-2021

Six decades of parliamentary speeches from the German Bundestag (1961–2021) are used to analyze the effect of MPs' expressed positions on cabinet selection. The dataset supports a study finding that MPs demonstrating strong partisan loyalty in government-opposition conflict were more likely to be appointed as ministers.

Use Cases

• Analyze the relationship between MPs' expressed positions on government-opposition conflict and their subsequent appointment to cabinet minister roles.
• Model the effect of partisan loyalty, measured through parliamentary speech content, on ministerial selection probabilities in coalition governments.
• Study temporal trends in the German Bundestag's government-opposition conflict dimension over the 1961-2021 period.

Strengths

• Covers a long and significant temporal range of six decades (1961–2021) of German parliamentary activity.
• Data is directly linked to a published academic study on ministerial appointments, providing clear analytical context.
• Focuses on a specific and well-defined political context: the German Bundestag and coalition governments.

Limitations

• The specific data structure, column names, and row count are not provided, limiting immediate usability.
• The dataset is geographically limited to Germany, reducing generalizability to other political systems.
• The description does not specify the volume of speeches or the granularity of MP-level data points.

Provenance

Source

Harvard Dataverse, authored by David Schmuck.

Collection Method

Derived from all speeches in the German Bundestag, with estimated MP positions on a government-opposition conflict dimension.

Time Range

1961–2021

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-01-22.

Geography

Germany