Gallon, Johannes: Fast-track legislation and parliamentary practices in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany.
This essay examines fast-track legislation in the parliamentary practice of the Federal Republic of Germany from a legal perspective with an empirically historical approach. Fast-track legislation is characterized by an acceleration of all components of the legislative process. Unlike the Rules of Procedure of the Bundestag, the Basic Law does not contain a minimum duration for legislative procedures. In 2023, the Federal Constitutional Court indicated deriving temporal constraints from the status of equality of the Members of Parliament for the legislative process. An analysis of the data from the Documentation and Information System for Parliamentary Processes (DIP) between 1994 and 2023 reveals a general reduction in the duration of the legislative process. However, less than one percent of laws are completed as fast-track laws within a few days. Fast-track legislation has been evident since the founding of the Federal Republic, with the causes for its implementation being diverse, and often crisis-related. The Federal Constitutional Court has thus far treated the phenomenon inconsistently. Attached is an overview of fast-track laws in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 2023. [ZParl, vol. 55 (2024), no. 2, pp. 239 – 262]
Friehe, Matthias: Citizens’ Assembly as a co-parliament?
In 2023 the German Bundestag set up a Citizens’ Assembly on food politics. The institutional design was consistent with suggestions made by proponents of deliberative democracy like James Fishkin or Peter Dienel. This included the selection of the participants by lot, advice to the participants by experts, and moderation of their discussions. This article argues that the Citizens’ Assembly was installed in an unconstitutional way. In reaction to the failure of the Weimar Republic, the constituent of 1949 reinforced the authority of the Basic Law by a general rule that prohibits amendments to the constitution “outside” the constitution. Every amendment to it shall expressively modify the text of the Basic Law. The Bundestag failed this requirement when it adopted a simple parliamentary resolution to create a de facto co-parliament. The article concludes with a proposal on how the Bundestag could constitutionalize a Citizens’ Committee by amending the Basic Law. This proposal differs from the design of the Citizens’ Assembly. The committee should connect professional politicians and “ordinary” citizens and therefore it should be composed of both citizens selected by lot, and Members of Parliament. [ZParl, vol. 55 (2024), no. 2, pp. 263 – 281]
Magdenko, Anna: Embargo in the Bundesrat – a result of unconstitutional coalition agreements.
The legislative process of assent laws at the federal level in Germany reveals a constitutional dilemma. The parties represented in the federal government and in the federal opposition sometimes use the Bundesrat to distinguish themselves politically for or against federal politics. The result is a pre-programmed embargo of the constitutional body. This instrumentalization of the Bundesrat not only attracts political attention; in the literature, various approaches try to solve the phenomenon by constitutional law. Based on the limitations of German Basic Law, this article develops a new perspective on the problem: The existing coalition agreements of the federal states disregard the constitution and are therefore unconstitutional. At the same time, the article critically examines the state of opinion and considers alternative clauses that respect the limits of the constitution. [ZParl, vol. 55 (2024), no. 2, pp. 282 – 299]
Hiller, Tobias: Measuring the difficulties in forming a coalition government in parliaments.
Electoral thresholds in the context of parliamentary elections are an instrument to prevent a fragmentation of parliaments and facilitate the formation of a coalition government. However, the thresholds also introduce distortions and modify the equality of electoral votes in an election. In order to decide to what extent these negative effects can be accepted, it is necessary to measure the difficulties in forming a coalition government and to quantify the effect of electoral thresholds on these difficulties. For this issue, the author introduces a concept based on cooperative game theory that he developed in 2023. This article applies this concept to German federal elections between 1994 and 2021. It is shown that plausible results are obtained, suggesting further application. [ZParl, vol. 55 (2024), no. 2, pp. 300 – 311]
Baumert, Jona-Frederik: Voting with buckets and cascades: How to easily avoid the personal vote paradox in elections in Bremen, Hamburg and Lower Saxony.
In state elections in Bremen and Hamburg and local elections in Lower Saxony, voters have the opportunity to vote directly for one or more candidates or to confirm the order of the lists proposed by the parties. The ratio of votes cast for the candidates and the list determines how many seats are filled according to the order of the list and how many seats are filled according to the order of the votes cast for the candidates. It may be the case that an additional vote for a candidate leads to him not receiving a seat at all. This phenomenon, which is reminiscent of the negative weight of votes in Bundestag elections, is a nuisance from the point of view of democratic theory because it violates the fundamental requirement that a vote for a candidate always leads to an increase in his chances of getting elected. Probst and Schröder speak of the personal vote paradox or external-utilization paradox. The aim of this article is to present three simple procedures that avoid the personal vote paradox without fundamentally changing the logic of the current electoral system. The effects of the proposed procedures are illustrated using the election results of the Bremen state election in 2023. [ZParl, vol. 55 (2024), no. 2, pp. 312 – 328]
Wendling, Lisa and Martin Gross: Small municipalities in municipal policy research: A case study in Bavaria.
Analysing local elections and local party competition is rarely the focus of political science research. In the few cases where this does happen, it is primarily the large cities or mayoral elections that are at the centre of scholars’ research interest. In our article, we shed light on the political variety in 1,063 small municipalities with fewer than 3,000 inhabitants in the 2020 Bavarian municipal elections and describe both the political supply and the effects of this offer by parties on voter turnout. Our results show that the political offer to citizens is dominated by small parties and independent local lists. Only the CSU managed to run in more than half of the municipalities. In addition, we demonstrate that the larger the municipality and the greater the number of municipal council seats to be allocated, the greater the number of political groups contesting the elections. Furthermore, a larger political offering also led to a higher voter turnout in the corresponding municipalities than in those municipalities with a smaller political offering. [ZParl, vol. 55 (2024), no. 2, pp. 329 – 349]
Kownatzki, Paul Philipp: Local party systems in Rhineland-Palatinate and Thuringia.
Corresponding to the party systems at the German federal and state level the local party systems in the German municipalities have become increasingly fragmented. Local politics is strongly influenced by the size of the self-administrating municipality. Looking at the German states Rhineland-Palatinate and Thuringia with their large number of small municipalities this relationship is investigated by looking at the local party systems. There exists a strong correlation between the size of a municipality and the number of lists in the local council, the fractionalization and the degree in which parties dominate the systems instead of local lists. However, in the class of smaller municipalities the situation is very different, showing municipalities with fractionalized party systems, systems of local lists or non-systems with or without a unified local list. One potential explanation can be seen in the local political culture, in particular the municipality reform processes in the German Länder. [ZParl, vol. 55 (2024), no. 2, pp. 350 – 372]
Klein, Markus, Christoph Kühling and Frederik Springer: A third of the sky. The political participation of women in Germany’s political parties.
Women currently make up 30 percent of German party members. Among new members, this proportion is only slightly higher at one third. Consequently, there are still barriers to women’s participation in party politics in Germany. This article examines gender-specific differences in the perception of incentives and costs of party membership along the entire membership cycle. The German Party Membership Studies of 1998, 2009 and 2017 serve as the data basis. It is shown that women more often than men cite inner-party conflicts as a reason for not joining a party. They also more frequently expect to have little fun working within a party. If they do join a party, they do so more often because of the expectations of their social environment. They are less likely than men to seek a political career. Accordingly, men take on internal party functions more often than women and run for public office more frequently. There is no evidence that internal party quota regulations increase the proportion of women in the membership. [ZParl, vol. 55 (2024), no. 2, pp. 373 – 394]
Best, Volker: Institutional consequences of the change in the party system in the Federal Republic of Germany.
The German party system has changed profoundly in recent decades. This has implications for the functioning of democratic institutions. The effects are almost entirely negative: government formation has become more difficult, the opposition has been split and weakened, the government’s power within the “second chamber” Bundesrat has dwindled, and the electoral system as well as representative democracy in general have suffered a decrease in standing and legitimacy; even the Federal Supreme Court is in danger of degenerating into a representative body. Positive consequences have only occurred for the Federal President. The overall picture is thus clearly marked by a loss of functions. [ZParl, vol. 55 (2024), no. 2, pp. 426 – 448]
Leunig, Sven: Is the Thuringian legal system resilient enough? On the policy paper “Strengthening the resilience of the rule of law in Thuringia. Recommendations for action from the scenario analysis of the Thuringia project”.
In April 2024, a scenario analysis on the resilience of the Thuringian constitutional and legal system was presented in the Thuringian state parliament with a view to the possible participation of an authoritarian populist party in government after the state elections in Thuringia in September 2024. In this study, a number of suggestions were made as to how democracy in the Free State could be made more resilient, even if a party such as the AfD “only” achieved the most or more than a third of the votes. This article examines these proposals from a political science perspective in terms of their usefulness and necessity. As a result, most of the proposals can be agreed with, even if it must be pointed out that democracy cannot be “saved” by changes to (constitutional) legal provisions alone. [ZParl, vol. 55 (2024), no. 2, pp. 449 – 460]
