October 20, 2013 | News

Congratulations!

Former MPIDR-Researcher Nora Sánchez Gassen successfully defended her thesis at the Universität der Bundeswehr, having been awarded the highest honors with summa cum laude. She investigated whether demographic changes and changes in the electoral laws in Germany have an influence on the composition of the electorate.

The composition of the electorate is fundamental to democracy because the voters decide through their electoral behavior about the political orientation of a country. Who may and who may not vote in public elections is defined by electoral law, as is the size and composition of the electorate. But demographic developments, too, determine what the electoral clientele eligible to elect the government will look like.

In the first part of her thesis, Nora Sánchez Gassen analyzed the development of the electorate in Germany over the past 60 years, focusing on the extent to which the size and age structure of the electorate has changed. Changes are mainly due to changes  in the fertility behavior and the increasing life expectancy of Germans, but also due to migration and the fertility behavior of immigrants.

In the second part of her thesis, Nora Sánchez Gassen examined the extent to which demographic developments would change the size and age structure of the electorate up to  2030. She calculated population projections in order to verify two hypotheses  about the future composition of the electorate; these hypotheses had gained great attention over the past years. The first hypothesis assumes that the electorate will age in the future; the second stipulates that the proportion of the population not eligible to vote will increase. This will include in the main people living in Germany without having German citizenship. The results obtained by Nora Sánchez Gassen from her calculations  verified both hypotheses. But the calculations also showed that both developments could be influenced, at least attenuated, by amendments to electoral laws and citizenship laws.

Nora Sánchez Gassen worked at the MPIDR from August 2008 to December 2012. Today she is a research scientist in the Demography Unit of the University of Stockholm.