A Day In The Bundestag

    This weeks’ seminar allowed us to explore the internal structure of the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag and how the multiparty system and mixed proportional representation affects the overall processes of government.

    The dynamics of a multiparty system allows the voters to select from a wider range of options, giving the population a better opportunity to be able find a political party that they can identify with, unlike the United States two party system.  However, the greater diversity of options has been problematic, most notably by the  degree of cooperation required between parties  for the government to function efficiently. 

    The implementation of a mixed proportional representation system has not helped the situation.  Although this electoral system was constructed to prevent extremist parties from reentering parliament, it has also ensured that a majority government is nearly impossible to achieve.  The formation  of coalitions is therefore mandatory.

    The formation of a coalition is viewed differently depending on the political party you are affiliated with. The larger parties like the CDU (holding power) and the SPD(official opposition) tend to seek out the smaller parties, such as the FDP and the Greens.   A majority of the time coalitions must be constructed with more than one  other party, this causes difficulties with larger parties like the SPD who now have to incorportate the needs of the smaller parties to get them on their side.  Unlike the smaller parties who would lose votes for deviating from their platform, the larger parties are considered to be catch all parties, meaning their policies are more suceptable to change inorder to accommodate for the bulk of the voters, therefore alterations are not detrimental to their voters.  Also, during negotiations the smaller parties become “tainted”, having been heavily influenced by whichever party – the CDU or the SPD -  arranged a deal first.

   

    I participated as a member of the CDU.  Our approach during coalition building involved attaining the numbers to form a majority coalition, enabling us to efficiently execute the responsibilities of the Bundestag.  As a larger party maintaining our ideology, while attempting to incorporate two additional smaller parties would be hard, therefore the size mattered more than ideology.  At 30% we needed to capture the FDP, 15% of the seats in parliament as well as the CSU who has 7% of the seats in parliament.  Our strategy  during pre-negotiation was to determine the qualities of our plateform that we wer willing to be leaniant about , and analyzes the platforms of both FDP and CSU  to see how to best approach these parties to ensure an alliance with both  would be possible without compromising our accountability to our voters.  We captured and alliance with the CSU by reducing our restriction on immigration, however the FDP proved much more difficult to negotiate with.  Our groups’ greatest mistake was initiating discussions with CSU prior to talking to the FDP.  In retrospect we should have made a deal with FDP before incorporating CSU, which inevitably cost us the majority coalition.

   My previous assumptions of Germany have been drastically changed.  The lasting impact of Hitler and WWII,  had greatly influenced my beliefs about the German regime. I have been pleasantly surprised to discover the exact opposite of what I had been expecting, a very efficient and effective government. Germany has surpassed the Allies (France, Russia, UK and USA) who initially  manufactured the Federal Republic of Germany(FRG).  Unlike its founders , Germany’s history of genocide has instilled the importance of working together to prevent the reoccurance of totalitarianism.  Consequently, that fear has lead to the construction of the FRG as cohesive and cooperative, unlike many other democracies.  One of my colleagues made a very intriguing point, the difficult history of Germany, the world wars and the struggle of unification, has not hindered the success of this nation.  The struggles have only made the people and the German government stronger.