Index

Every four years, the parties stand in the general elections to the Bundestag. Traditionally, the turn-out is high in Germany, and following a high in the 1970s, when the turn-out was over 90 percent, since reunification it has been around 80 percent. 76.6 per cent of eligible voters took part in the election to the 20th German Bundestag in 2021.

61,18 million Germans aged 18 or over are called on to cast a vote in the elections to the Bundestag. Women account for more than 31,5 million of them and thus constitute a majority of the electorate. At the 2021 elections to the Bundestag 2,8 million persons were enfranchised as first-time voters.

According to the Basic Law it is the task of the political parties to participate in political will formation by the people. As such, putting forward candidates for political office and the organization of election campaigns both have the status of constitutional tasks. For this reason the parties are reimbursed the costs they incur in their respective election campaign. The reimbursement of election campaign costs, a feature Germany was the first country to introduce, is now commonplace in most democracies. According to the Basic Law, a political party’s internal organization must conform to democratic principles (member democracy). And all parties are expected to acknowledge the values and structure of the democratic state.

Parties whose commitment to democracy is in doubt can, at the request of the Federal Government, be banned from participation in the country’s political life. However, such a ban is not automatically forthcoming in any sense. Should the Federal Government consider a ban to be appropriate because such parties pose a threat to the democratic system, it can only petition for such a ban. Any such ban may only be enacted by the Federal Constitutional Court after duly considering the individual case. The idea is to prevent the ruling parties simply banning those parties who might prove awkward in the fight for votes. In the history of the Federal Republic there have been few banning processes, and even fewer parties have actually been banned. Though the Basic Law accords political parties some privileges, these are, basically, means for society to express itself. They take full responsibility for failing at elections, a loss of members, or strife in conjunction with personnel and factual issues.

The 20th German Bundestag is made up of 736 representatives of 7 parties: SPD, CDU, CSU, Alliance 90/The Greens, FDP, AfD and The Left. Since the first Bundestag elections in 1949, the CDU have formed a joint party with their sister party the CSU, which only stands for election in Bavaria.

The Bundestag is made up of the elected representatives of the German people. In principle elections to the Bundestag are proportionally representative, with each party’s share of the vote in the election reflecting the number of seats it occupies in the parliament. But the electoral system also contains elements of majority voting: citizens cast a first vote for a candidate in a constituency and a second vote for a party’s state list. The Bundestag normally has 598 members by law, but this number has recently been significantly higher due to a system of so-called “overhang mandates” and “balancing mandates”. The plan is to amend the law to change this system, thereby ensuring that the number of parliamentarians is limited in future. One requirement for entry into parliament is the so-called five per cent hurdle: parties only sit in parliament if they win at least five per cent of the national vote.
 
The Bundestag is the German parliament. Its elected representatives are organized in parliamentary parties and select a President from among them. It is the function of the Bundestag to elect the Federal Chancellor and keep him in office through support for his policies. The members of parliament can relieve the Chancellor of his duties by denying him their confidence, as do other parliaments. Nor does it make any great difference that in Germany the Chancellor is elected, whereas in Great Britain and other parliamentary democracies he is appointed by the head of state. In other parliamentary democracies, a party leader who can rely on a parliamentary majority is always appointed head of government.

The second major function of the elected representatives in the Bundestag is to pass legislation. Here, again, the Bundestag is similar to parliaments in other parliamentary democracies in that it for the most part enacts bills proposed by the Federal Government. The Bundestag however, which resides in the Reichstag building in Berlin, is less like the debating parliament typified by British parliamentary culture and corresponds far more closely to the US type of so-called working parliament. The Bundestag’s expert parliamentary committees discuss the bills introduced to Parliament in detail.
 
The Bundestag’s expert Parliamentary Committees discuss the bills introduced to Parliament in great detail. Here, the activities of the Bundestag resemble to some extent Congress in the USA, the prototype of a working parliament. The third major function of the Bundestag is to keep a check on the government’s work. It is the opposition that fulfills the function of monitoring the work of government in a manner visible to the general public. A less evident, but no less effective form of control is carried out by the members of parliament of the governing parties, who behind closed doors ask the government representatives critical questions.