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The 'Bundestag' (Federal Diet) is the parliament of Germany. It was established with Germany's constitution of 1949 (the ''Grundgesetz),'' and is the successor of the earlier ''Reichstag''. The current President of the Bundestag is Norbert Lammert.
History
The ''Bundestag'' was also the nickname of the governing body of the German Confederation from 1815 to 1866 (officially called ''Bundesversammlung'', Federal Assembly). This body met in Frankfurt and was presided over by the Austrian delegate. As one of the chief instruments of the reactionary forces opposed to democracy and nationalism, it was dissolved during the liberal revolution of 1848 but reconvened in 1850. It is a predecessor to the modern Bundestag in name only. While the modern parliament is elected by the people, the Bundestag of the German Confederation was appointed by the various princes and the governments of the free cities.
With the dissolution of the German Confederation in 1866 and the founding of the German Empire (Deutsches Reich) in 1871, the ''Reichstag'' was established as the German parliament in Berlin. Two decades later, the current parliament building was erected. The ''Reichstag'' delegates were elected by direct and equal male suffrage (and not the three-class electoral system prevailing in Prussia until 1918). The Reichstag did not participate in the appointment of the Chancellor until the parliamentary reforms of October 1918. After the Revolution of November 1918 and the establishment of the Weimar Constitution, women were given the right to vote for (and serve in) the Reichstag, and the parliament could use the no-confidence vote to force the chancellor or any cabinet member to resign. In March 1933, one month after the Reichstag fire, parliament ceded its powers to the Federal Government of Chancellor Adolf Hitler by passing the infamous Enabling act of 1933. Afterward it met only rarely to unanimously rubber-stamp the decisions of the government. It was last convened on 26 April 1942.
With the new constitution of 1949, the Bundestag was established as the new (West) German parliament. Because West Berlin was not officially under the jurisdiction of the Constitution and because of the Cold War, the Bundestag met in Bonn in several different buildings, including (provisionally) a former water works facility. The former Reichstag building housed a history exhibition (Fragen an die deutsche Geschichte) and served occasionally as a conference center.
Since 1999, the German parliament has again assembled in Berlin in its original ''Reichstag'' building, which dates from the 1890s and underwent a significant renovation under the lead of British architect Sir Norman Foster.
In 2005, a small aircraft crashed close to the German parliament. It was then decided to ban private air traffic over Central Berlin.
Tasks
Together with the ''Bundesrat'', the ''Bundestag'' is the legislative branch of the German political system.
Although most legislation is initiated by the executive branch, the ''Bundestag'' considers the legislative function its most important responsibility, concentrating much of its energy on assessing and amending the government's legislative program. The committees (see below) play a prominent role in this process. Plenary sessions provide a forum for members to engage in public debate on legislative issues before them, but they tend to be well attended only when significant legislation is being considered.
The ''Bundestag'' members are the only federal officials directly elected by the public; the ''Bundestag'' in turn elects the Chancellor and, in addition, exercises oversight of the executive branch on issues of both substantive policy and routine administration. This check on executive power can be employed through binding legislation, public debates on government policy, investigations, and direct questioning of the chancellor or cabinet officials. For example, the ''Bundestag'' can conduct a question hour ''(Fragestunde),'' in which a government representative responds to a previously submitted written question from a member. Members can ask related questions during the question hour. The questions can concern anything from a major policy issue to a specific constituent's problem. Use of the question hour has increased markedly over the past forty years, with more than 20,000 questions being posed during the 1987-90 term. Understandably, the opposition parties are active in exercising the parliamentary right to scrutinize government actions.
One striking difference when comparing the ''Bundestag'' with the U.S. Congress is the lack of time spent on serving constituents in Germany. In part, that difference results from the fact that only 50 percent of ''Bundestag'' deputies are directly elected to represent a specific geographic district; the other half are elected as party representatives (see below). The political parties are thus of great importance in Germany's electoral system, and many voters tend not to see the candidates as autonomous political personalities but rather as agents of the party. Interestingly, constituent service seems not to be perceived, either by the electorate or by the representatives, as a critical function of the legislator. A practical constraint on the expansion of constituent service is the limited personal staff of ''Bundestag'' deputies.
Constituent service does, however, take place in the form of the Petition Committee, rather than through individual delegates. In 2004, the Petition Committee received over 18,000 complaints from citizens and was able to negotiate a mutually satisfactory solution to more than half of them.
Election
The Bundestag in Berlin.
Members serve four-year terms; elections are held every four years, or earlier in the relatively rare case that the Bundestag is being dissolved prematurely by the president on the recommendation of the chancellor, which has happened three times as of 2005: 1972 under Chancellor Willy Brandt, 1982 under Chancellor Helmut Kohl and 2005 under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
All candidates must be at least eighteen years old; there are no term limits. The election uses the MMP electoral system, a hybrid of the first-past-the-post election system and party-list proportional representation. In addition, the ''Bundestag'' has a minimum threshold of either 5% of the national party vote or three (directly elected) constituency representatives for a party to gain additional representation through the system of proportional representation.
Thus, small (and often extremist) minority parties cannot easily enter the Bundestag and prevent the formation of stable majority governments as they could under the Weimar constitution. Since 1961, only two new parties (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and Die Linke) have entered the Bundestag.
The additional member system results in a varying number of seats; since the 2002 elections, there have been 603 seats. The distribution of the seats is calculated by the Largest remainder method. The additional seats are distributed to ensure that the combined total of direct and additional seats is proportional to the vote; this is calculated separately for each state. Sometimes parties win more seats directly than what their proportional share would entitle them to — these are known as overhang seats. Unlike the situation in some German state parliaments, overhang seats are not compensated in the Bundestag.
Distribution of seats in the Bundestag
Half of the Members of the Bundestag are elected directly from 299 constituencies (first-past-the-post election system), the other half on the parties’ Land lists (party-list proportional representation).
Accordingly, each voter has two votes in the elections to the Bundestag. The first vote (first-past-the-post election system), allowing voters to elect their local representatives to the Bundestag, decides which candidates are sent to Parliament from the constituencies.
The second vote (party-list proportional representation) is cast for a party list.
And it is this second vote that determines the relative strengths of the parties represented in the Bundestag.
At least 598 Members of the Bundestag are elected in this way. In addition to this, there are certain circumstances in which some candidates win what are known as overhang seat when the seats are being distributed.
The 598 seats are distributed among the parties that have gained more than 5% of the second votes or at least 3 direct mandates. Each of these parties is allocated seats in the Bundestag in proportion to the number of votes it has received (Largest remainder method).
When the total number of mandates gained by a party has been determined, they are distributed between the Land lists. The distribution of seats between the parties in each Land is proportional to the second vote results: (Largest remainder method).
The first of the mandates allocated to each Land go to the
candidates who have won direct mandates in that Land.
The rest are assigned in order to the candidates on the Land list put forward before the election.
Overhang seat:
If a party has gained more direct mandates in a Land than it is entitled to according to the results of the second vote, it does not forfeit these mandates because all directly elected candidates are guaranteed a seat in the Bundestag.
Detail of the Land list seats won by each party
Election result
Seats by party (16th Bundestag, since general election on 18th September 2005)
Distribution of seats in the 16th Bundestag.
| + | CDU and CSU: | 224 | (36.6%) | including 6 overhang seats |
| + | SPD: | 222 | (36.2%) | including 9 overhang seats |
| + | FDP: | 61 | (9.9%) | |
| + | The Left: | 53 | (8.6%) | |
| + | Alliance '90/Greens: | 51 | (8.3%) | |
| + | Independents/No parliamentary group: | 2 | (0.3%) |
Number of the Land list seats won by each party
For a list of current members, see the List of Bundestag Members.
List of Bundestag by Session
Historic seat distribution in the German Bundestag
| 'Historic seat distribution in the German Bundestag (at the beginning of each session)' | |||||||||
| ' ' | 'Session' | 'Seats' | 'CDU/CSU' | 'SPD' | 'FDP' | 'Alliance '90 / The Greens'1 | 'The Left'2 | 'German Party' | 'Others' |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| '1st' | '1949 – 1953' | 402 | 139 | 131 | 52 | – | – | 17 | Bavarian Party 17, Communist Party of Germany 15, Economic Development Coalition (WAV) 12, German Centre Party 10, DKP-DRP 5, South Schleswig Voter Federation 1, Independent 3 |
| '2nd' | '1953 – 1957' | 487 | 243 | 151 | 48 | – | – | 15 | All-German Bloc/League of Expellees and Deprived of Rights (GB-BHE) 27, German Centre Party 3 |
| '3rd' | '1957 – 1961' | 497 | 270 | 169 | 41 | – | – | 17 | – |
| '4th' | '1961 – 1965' | 499 | 242 | 190 | 67 | – | – | – | – |
| '5th' | '1965 – 1969' | 496 | 245 | 202 | 49 | – | – | – | – |
| '6th' | '1969 – 1972' | 496 | 242 | 224 | 30 | – | – | – | – |
| '7th' | '1972 – 1976' | 496 | 225 | 230 | 41 | – | – | – | – |
| '8th' | '1976 – 1980' | 496 | 243 | 214 | 39 | – | – | – | – |
| '9th' | '1980 – 1983' | 497 | 226 | 218 | 53 | – | – | – | – |
| '10th' | '1983 – 1987' | 498 | 244 | 193 | 34 | 27 | – | – | – |
| '11th' | '1987 – 1990' | 497 | 223 | 186 | 46 | 42 | – | – | – |
| '12th' | '1990 – 1994' | 662 | 319 | 239 | 79 | 8 | 17 | – | – |
| '13th' | '1994 – 1998' | 672 | 294 | 252 | 47 | 49 | 30 | – | – |
| '14th' | '1998 – 2002' | 669 | 245 | 298 | 43 | 47 | 36 | – | – |
| '15th' | '2002 – 2005' | 603 | 248 | 251 | 47 | 55 | 2 | – | – |
| '16th' | 'since 2005' | 614 | 226 | 222 | 61 | 51 | 54 | – | – |
1: 1983 to 1990 The Greens, 1990 to 1994 Alliance 90, since 1994 Alliance 90/The Greens
21990 to 2005 PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism), 2005 to 2007 The Left Party.PDS, since 2007 The Left
For detailed information on particular sessions of the Bundestag, please refer to the List of German Bundestage.
Historic seat distribution in the German Bundestag (at the beginning of each session).
Presidents since 1949
★ resigned for medical reasons
★
★
★
★
★
†first woman and Social Democrat to hold the post
§ resigned when he became President of Germany
Organization
The most important organizational structures within the ''Bundestag'' are parliamentary groups (''Fraktionen''; sing. ''Fraktion''), which are formed by political parties represented in the chamber which have gained more than 5% of the total votes; CDU and CSU have always formed a single united ''Fraktion''. The size of a party's ''Fraktion'' determines the extent of its representation on legislative committees, the time slots allotted for speaking, the number of committee chairs it can hold, and its representation in executive bodies of the ''Bundestag.'' The ''Fraktionen,'' not the members, receive the bulk of government funding for legislative and administrative activities.
The leadership of each ''Fraktion'' consists of a parliamentary party leader, several deputy leaders, and an executive committee. The leadership's major responsibilities are to represent the ''Fraktion,'' enforce party discipline, and orchestrate the party's parliamentary activities. The members of each ''Fraktion'' are distributed among working groups focused on specific policy-related topics such as social policy, economics, and foreign policy. The ''Fraktion'' meets once a week to consider legislation before the ''Bundestag'' and formulate the party's position on it.
Parties which do not fulfill the criterion for being a ''Fraktion'' but which have at least three seats by direct elections (i.e. which have at least three MPs representing a certain electoral district) in the Bundestag can be granted the status of a ''group'' of the Bundestag. This applied to the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) from 1990-1998. This status entails some privileges which are in general less than those of a ''Fraktion''. In the current ''Bundestag'', there are no such groups (the PDS only had two MPs in parliament until 2005 and was thus not even considered a group anymore; the party has now returned to the Bundestag with full ''Fraktion'' status).
The ''Bundestag's'' 'executive bodies' include the Council of Elders and the Presidium. The council consists of the ''Bundestag'' leadership, together with the most senior representatives of each ''Fraktion,'' with the number of these representatives tied to the strength of the party in the chamber. The council is the coordination hub, determining the daily legislative agenda and assigning committee chairpersons based on party representation. The council also serves as an important forum for interparty negotiations on specific legislation and procedural issues. The Presidium is responsible for the routine administration of the ''Bundestag,'' including its clerical and research activities. It consists of the chamber's president (usually elected from the largest ''Fraktion'') and vice presidents (one from each ''Fraktion).''
Most of the legislative work in the ''Bundestag'' is the product of 'standing committees,' which exist largely unchanged throughout one legislative period. The number of committees approximates the number of federal ministries, and the titles of each are roughly similar (e.g., defense, agriculture, and labor). Between 1987 and 1990, the term of the eleventh ''Bundestag,'' there were twenty-one standing committees. The distribution of committee chairs and the membership of each committee reflect the relative strength of the various parties in the chamber. In the eleventh ''Bundestag,'' the CDU/CSU chaired eleven committees, the SPD eight, the FDP one, and the environmentalist party, the Greens ''(Die Grünen),'' one. Members of the opposition party can chair a significant number of standing committees. These committees have either a small staff or no staff at all.
See also
★ Politics of Germany
★ ''Bundesrat''
External links
★ Official website
★ 2002 elections
★ German election database
★ Map of constituencies
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