During the 2016 election to the Student Parliament of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), an experiment on 'The Third Vote' was conducted. The goal was to test an alternative election method based on the idea of internet voting advice applications (VAAs). Under the election method...

The outcomes of the 2013 German Bundestag (federal parliament) are analyzed from the viewpoint of direct democracy. For this purpose, the party positions on 36 topical issues are compared with the results of public opinion polls, and the party and coalition indices of popularity (the average...

The outcomes of the 2013 German Bundestag (federal parliament) election are analyzed from the viewpoint of direct democracy. For this purpose, the party positions on 36 topical issues are compared with the results of public opinion polls, and the party and coalition indices of popularity (the...

Under the "Third Vote" method, the voters cast no votes but are asked about their preferences on policy issues as declared in the party manifestos (like in voting advice applications, e.g. German Wahl-O-Mat). Then the policy profile of the electorate with the balance of public opinion on every...

Several devices in designing composite indicators for policy monitoring and benchmarking are discussed: weighting and scaling of variables, hierarchical organization, handling rank-based variables, relief tables, survey simulation techniques which combine normative and empirical data. Some...

Aufgrund der Daten der Dritten Europäischen Umfrage für Arbeitsbedingungen wurde für den Vergleich europäischer Staaten ein zusammengesetzter Indikator der Arbeitsbedingungen aufgestellt. Die wichtigsten Forschungsergebnisse sind wie folgt: (a) die Ungleichheit zwischen europäischen Staaten...

German structural policy is characterized by a composite indicator with three targets:(1) minimization of unemployment, (2) maximization of GDP, and (3) equalization of regional unemployment rates. The composite indicator with given target weights is maximized subject to budget constraints and...

The composite indicator "Quality of work" for comparing European countries is con- structed from data of the Third European Survey on Working Conditions. The main findings are as follows: (a) European countries differ with respect to working conditions statistically more significantly than with...

The notion of flexicurity promotes the idea of compensation of labour market deregulation (= flexibilization) with advantages in employment and social security. To monitor effects of flexicurity policies in Europe, flexicurity indices are constructed from (a) scores of the strictness of...