Parliamentarism in Western Germany: The Functioning of the Bundestag

Although universal male suffrage as the basis for a representative assembly existed in Germany half a century earlier than in Great Britain, the Reichstag never occupied as important a position in the German constitutional order as the House of Commons did in the British. Neither in its representative function of integrating the community (in Friedrich's terms), nor in its deliberative function as a lawmaking and supervisory body, did the Reichstag ever achieve the significance that would warrant describing the German system of government, either under the Second Empire or the first Republic, as a parliamentary system. The popularly elected Reichstag under Bismarck, in form so advanced for its time, existed under a constitutional system whose “artfully manufactured chaos” permitted, in reality, the exercise of authoritarian government with little parliamentary interference. When, during the latter years of the first World War, the Reichstag demonstrated an increasing ability to call governments to account, this apparent development of a parliamentary system gained a fleeting constitutional recognition during the last days of the Empire and paved the way for the provisions of the Weimar Constitution under which the Government was to be responsible to the Reichstag. Nevertheless, the republican Reichstag never actually fulfilled its constitutional functions, and in difficult times fell victim to the habits of the authoritarian past, manifesting themselves in the autonomy of the army and the bureaucracy, and the irresponsible behavior of the political parties and the President. “Surely the new constitution granted the Reichstag unquestioned leadership in the formation of policy,” a political analyst of the Weimar epoch has written.