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We find strong evidence of monopoly legislative agenda control by government parties in the Bundestag. First, the government parties have near-zero roll rates, while the opposition parties are often rolled over half the time. Second, only opposition parties' (and not government parties') roll rates increase with the distances of each party from the floor median. Third, almost all policy moves are towards the government coalition (the only exceptions occur during periods of divided government). Fourth, roll rates for government parties skyrocket when they fall into the opposition and roll rates for opposition parties plummet when they enter government, while policy movements go from being nearly 100 per cent rightward when there is a rightist government to 100 per cent leftward under a leftist government. INTRODUCTIONGoverning coalitions in parliamentary democracies are famous for their voting cohesion. Individual MPs rarely dissent from their party's position, coalition partners rarely disagree publicly, and the government's programme thus proceeds through the assembly on the strength of the coalition's numerical superiority -simply outvoting the opposition at every turn.Iron discipline, however, is not a natural phenomenon. The component parties in multiparty coalitions do not agree on all possible issues; they merely agree on all issues actually considered in plenary sessions of the assembly.1 Thus, the high levels of coalition discipline observed in roll call votes are as much a function of governmental agenda control -specifically, the ability of the coalition to prevent bills that would split its members apart from being voted on the floor -as they are of the carrots and sticks that governing parties use to whip their members into line. 2In some polities, such as France's Fifth Republic, 3 the government's ability to control the legislative agenda has clear institutional sources. In this article, we explore agenda setting in Germany, a case in which the government's institutional control of the agenda might be questioned -given the tradition of seeking broad consensus in the Council of Elders (the formal agenda-setting institution in the Bundestag) and the frequency with which the government does not command a majority in the second chamber (the Bundesrat). We argue that the Council of Elders seeks -and is expected by the opposition to seek -only a procedural and not a substantive consensus; that the government is relatively successful at patching together support in the Bundesrat; and thus, that the most likely impediments to governmental agenda

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When compared to research on the family and the school, the study of peer groups within the context of political socialization is a relatively neglected area. Somewhat more concern for peer-group effects has been indicated by non-political social scientists, especially social psychologists. But even though some of their work is suggestive, its application is often marginal for explaining political attitudes. Just as the existing theory on peer-group political socialization is weak, so are the existing data and analysis. The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature and extent of peer-group socialization among German students. This analysis is based on a survey of student attitudes at the University of Cologne. The survey is a random sample of 855 respondents and was carried out in 1968.