The incorporation of persons with a migration background into political life in Germany is an under-researched theme. This paper will help to fill this gap by analyzing immigrant incorporation into political life at the local level in North-Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany’s largest regional state. Although overall levels of immigrant representation are on the rise, immigrants come nowhere close to parity representation in the 29 big cities of NRW. To explain the levels of immigrant representation found in the municipal councils, which vary from city to city and from party to party, special focus will be placed on the role of the political parties as major gatekeepers regulating access to representational bodies. Common arguments as to the effects of electoral systems, specifically pertaining to pure proportional or majoritarian representation, do not apply to the mixed electoral systems analyzed here. Instead, we find that political parties are faced with a mixed set of incentives in considering the nomination of immigrant candidates, who stand in substantial supply, for election at the local level in Germany.
