Boundestag Essay

Parliament is very effective when dealing with the public and their interests and needs like when they redress public grievances to make sure they are listened too. However, parliament isn’t so effective on the representative side of things. This is because the electoral system that we use isn’t very fair and excludes smaller parties of a chance of being voted into parliament. This therefore means a large number of public votes have been

The Weimar Constitution itself could also been seen as a threat to the stability of the Weimar Republic. In the Bundesrat, Prussian seats were elected by those who paid more tax, resulting in it therefore been dominated by conservatives. 17/58 seats in the Bundesrat were from Prussia and had power to veto bills. This in itself mean that any decisions in the Bundesrat were most likely to be that of traditionalist and conservative decisions as oppose to socialist or liberal. Furthermore, the Republic was trying to introduce democracy through this constitution. However, the Kaiser still had enough power to over-rule any decisions, making the system dependent on the abilities and personality of the Kaiser. Such a system would be seem as fundamentally flawed and therefore unable to provide stability and a working democracy. Additionally, the proportional representation voting system meant that a party had to have over 51% of the vote in order to form a government which normally resulted in many coalitions. This also resulted in six different governments coming into power between 1919 and 1923. This meant stability within the Weimar Republic was highly unlikely with so many governments coming in and out of power.

“In theory Parliament has total power. It is sovereign” were the words of Dicey in his book Law of the Constitution. A.V. Dicey was a British jurist and constitutional theorist in the 20th century who was adamant and argued extensively about the absolute nature of sovereignty of the Parliament which he derived from Coke and Blackstone. He had said “"Parliament" has

Germany started out as a divided nation fighting for dominance in Europe. Otto Von Bismarck was able to take this struggling complexity and unify it. During this process Bismarck turned the small country of Prussia into a powerhouse, growing the population from 11 to 18 million. Bismarck sprung from a landlord class and moved his way up the political ladder as realpolitik, realistic Politician. He was a man of simple ideals; he stressed duty, service, order, and the fear of God. These ideals along with manipulative tactics are what lead Bismarck on his journey of the unification of Germany, proving that without Bismarck’s diplomatic efforts between 1871 and 1890 Europe would not be the stabilized continent it is today.

The people wanted this new civilian government and this provides a strong basis to the argument that there were drastic revolutionary changes in Germany after world war one. The fundamental; constituent changes have been often called a revolution however some historians would argue that this is a real exaggeration. The Reichstag never really seemed to want to make a massive impact on the events of Germanyfor example; in October 1918 the Reichstag adjourned on 5 October and went into recess until 22 October, when it adjourned again until 9 November. These were hardly the actions of an institution that wanted to shape events decisively.

The German government (Bundesregierung) is a democracy for how the people participate. The people are able to vote for leaders and can choose from different political parties like the Christian Social Union or the Social Democratic Party, and many others. They have an indirect democracy from their elections for representatives in each state who then vote for members of Parliament. The way their electoral system is set up when voting allows citizens to “express on the one hand a preference for a specific party alliance, and on the other determine the balance of power,” Deutschland.de. Democracy is the form of

The Weimar Republic came into being on November 1918 and was born in the throes of military defeat and social revolution. In January 1919, a National Assembly was elected to draft a constitution. The government, composed of members from the assembly, came to be called the Weimar coalition and included the SPD, the German Democratic Party and the Centre Party. Weimar was a rushed and often referred to as a ‘mistaken democracy'. Its been said "The dysfunctional nature of Weimar democracy ... aided

For many years it has been argued that parliamentary sovereignty has, and still is, being eroded. As said by AV Dicey, the word ‘sovereignty’ is used to describe the idea of “the power of law making unrestricted by any legal limit”. Parliamentary sovereignty is a principle of the UK constitution, stating that Parliament is the supreme legal authority in the UK, able to create and remove any law. This power over-rules courts and all other jurisdiction. It also cannot be entrenched; this is where all laws passed by the party in government can be changed by future parliaments. In recent years sovereignty of parliament has been a

The second function that I’m concentrating on is Representation. In the Commons MPs are elected every five years to represent local constituencies. The link between the House of Commons and the local constituency is very important as it provides information to the government on how the public is responding to their policies and ideas for new

The governmental system which embodies the European Union is currently both ambiguous and undemocratic. However, in order to explore alternative strategies of improvement, it is firstly crucial to identify the root of the deficit. One is then able to discuss contributing factors which affect the national parliaments lack of importance when creating legislation and strategies of review such as the subsidiary and proportionality tests.

The German Reichstag was the parliament of Germany up to the early 1930s, when it was mysteriously burnt down, on a cold

Bismarck was an unrivalled diplomat during his reign. His German Reich constitution of April 1871 allowed him to dictate the government on his own terms. However, the parliament only “had the power to initiate debate upon any point of his (Bismarck’s) policy, but neither he nor any other minister was responsible to the assembly for his actions" (T. A. Morris, p116). Furthermore, the constitution was designed to give the impression that

German history is seen as a ‘painful issue for thousands of Germans and other Europeans’ . However it has interested many historians over the years into inquiring how and why Hitler came to power and how much of this was to do with the failure of parliamentary democracy in Germany. To fully ascertain to what extent these events have in common and what reasons led to the fall of democracy and rise of the Nazis, each have to be looked at individually. Also it seems beneficial, to be able to evaluate these in the relevant context, to look at the situation in Germany was in prior to 1920.

The establishment of the new constitution drawn up on the 11th of August 1919 caused many internal issues within the democratic system as a result of continual economic disaster. Germany was to be a Federal State, with a parliament to be elected every four years following a system of proportional representation. This system faltered due to the amount of political parties (during the rule of the Weimar Republic, there were 21 separate coalitions) and a lack of political census. Economic conditions lead to a polarisation of extremists left and right support. In times of instability it was noted that poor standards of living meant the lower class leaned towards the left wing, while the higher class leaned towards the right due to lack of national pride. The extent of economic issues in Germany caused the middle class and aristocrats to consider political extremities. Consequently this caused huge political divisions in German society, which denied the republic of any political census, resulting in a large amounts of political parties and changes to government. This made it very difficult to establish stability in the republic, or even get laws passed, weakening the effect of the democratic system. The political chaos economic conditions brought about caused many Germans to lose faith in the new democratic system during its initial period of rule.

As it began, our century drew to a close, with Germany once again the economic powerhouse and political hub of Europe. What is remarkable is how quickly this happened, how unbidden and unanticipated: the toppling of the Berlin Wall in November 1989; the reunification a year later; the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in late December 1991; a resurgent impetus to West European integration in 1992; and NATO enlargement, which was consecrated in April 1999. Unquestionably, this chain of events has profoundly affected Germany’s situation over the past decades. For the first time since the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in 1949 and the painstaking process of