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Federalism and the Party System: The Case of West Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Arnold J. Heidenheimer
Arnold J. Heidenheimer
Affiliation:
Wayne State University
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Extract

West Germany today is ruled by a constitutional regime in which a strongly led democratic majority party has carried the predominant, indeed, increasingly almost the sole, responsibility of running the national government. Yet the “basic law” of the country embodies a federal system of institutions and checks and balances which were in great measure designed specifically to hamper the exercise of power by just such a politically powerful national government. The inclusion in the Constitution, under German federalist and Allied pressure, of a number of institutional devices, especially that of the “Bundesrat” rather than the “Senate” form of upper House, was rather openly intended to introduce restraints on the power of national party leaderships by allowing the leaders of the Laender governments a direct voice and, on many matters, a potential veto in the formulation of national policies. The creation of a second chamber with members drawn from, and exclusively responsible to, the Land cabinets was pretty clearly an attempt to institutionalize political diversity. It was expected that as the party makeup of the several Laender governments would often differ from the coalition pattern of the Federal government, and that as each Land government would have to cast its indivisible Bundesrat votes with regard both to its regional interests and to its particular party composition, the resultant configuration of power in the upper chamber would differ considerably from that in the Bundestag.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , September 1958 , pp. 809 - 828
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1958

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References

1 For accounts of the political background of the Basic Law, see Simons, Hans, “The Bonn Constitution and Its Government” in Morgenthau, Hans (ed.), Germany and the Future of Europe (Chicago, 1951)Google Scholar; Friedrich, Carl J. and Spiro, Herbert J., “The Constitution of the German Federal Republic” in Litchfield, Edward H. (ed.), Governing Post-War Germany (Ithaca, 1953)Google Scholar; and Mason, John Brown “Federalism—The Bonn Model” in Constitutions and Constitutional Trends Since World War II (New York, 2d ed., 1955)Google Scholar. The authoritative analytical account of the decisions of the Parliamentary Council is Doemming, Klaus-Berto et al. , “Die Entstehungsgeschichte der Artikel des Grundgesetzes” in Jahrbuch des oeffentlichen Rechts, Neue Folge, Band 1, (Tuebingen, 1953)Google Scholar. Most recent is Golay's, John Ford penetrating study, The Founding of the Federal Republic of Germany (Chicago, 1958)Google Scholar.

2 Loewenstein, Karl, Political Power and the Governmental Process (Chicago, 1957), p. 97Google Scholar.

3 Those which might be said to have a record of stability equal to that of the Federal government, in the sense that the dominant party has maintained itself throughout, would include only Rhineland-Palatinate (CDU), Bremen (SPD) and Hessen (SPD).

4 Simons, op. cit. p. 122.

5 Schuetz, Klaus, “Die Sozialdemokratie im Nachkriegsdeutschland,” in Lange, M. G. (ed.), Parteien in der Bundesrepublik (Berlin, 1955), pp. 228–29Google Scholar.

6 Systematic accounts of early postwar developments among Christian Democratic groups in South Germany are badly lacking. H. G. Wieck, the author of the published account of CDU beginnings in the British zone, subsequently prepared a manuscript on South Germany. This has yet to be published by the sponsoring Kommission der Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der Politischen Parteien (Bonn). A detailed account of the development of the CDU between 1945 and 1950, by the author of this article, will be published this year.

7 Ellwangen group paper, “Laenderkammer oder Laenderrat,” mimeographed, n.d.

8 Declaration by SPD executive of June 29, 1948, cited in Schuetz, op. cit., p. 231.

9 “Laenderkammer oder Laenderrat,” op. cit.

10 Protocol, CDU British Zonal Council, Meeting of February 26, 1949, Archive Doerpinghaus, Roisdorf. Parenthetical insertions are the author's.

11 Eschenburg, Theodor, Staat und Gesellschaft in Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1956), p. 614Google Scholar.

12 Article 50, Basic Law. For a concise enumeration of the Bundesrat's constitutional powers, see Eschenburg, op. cit., pp. 618–27.

13 Union in Deutschland, (UiD) CDU newsletter, June, 24, 1950.

14 Letter of August 19, 1950, Archive CDU Fraktion, North-Rhine-Westphalian Landtag, Duesseldorf.

15 UiD, August 26, 1950.

16 Protocol, CDU Landtag Fraktion, op. cit., Meeting of September 12, 1950.

17 Since it was known that the vast majority of Wuerttembergers were for the merger, while only a modest majority of Badeners—and those heavily concentrated in South Baden—were bitterly opposed, it could safely be speculated that if four referendum districts were set up, merger would be approved by varying majorities in three out of four. The creation of only two referendum areas, based on the historical Land boundaries, would have given the Baden state's-righters a chance to get a majority in both parts of Baden sufficient to block implementation of the plan.

18 Bundestag Reports, 109th meeting, 1st session, pp. 4418 ff. For a collection of most of the pertinent debates and court arguments on this case see Mainzer Institut fuer Staatslehre und Politik, Der Kampf um den Suedweststaat; Verhandlungen und Beschluesse der gesetzgebenden Koerperschaften des Bundes und des Bundesverfassungsgerichts (Munich, 1952)Google Scholar.

19 See “Strafantrag” of the South Baden Finance Minister, Eckert, against the Federal deputy, Hilbert, Archive CDU Nord-Baden, Karlsruhe.

20 Letter Landrat Schwan to CDU Land chairman Gurk, 24 December 1951, Archive CDU Nord-Baden.

21 Letter, signed by 15 priests of the “Erzbischoeflisches Dekanat Ettlingen,” to CDU Nord-Baden executive, December 19, 1951, Archive CDU Nord-Baden.

22 Deutsche Zeitung, December 19, 1951.

23 Mannheimer Morgen, January 14, 1952.

24 Bulletin, March 11, 1952.

25 UiD, May 23, 1952.

26 For a superb analysis of the fantastically tangled constitutional challenges which arose in the course of the EDC controversy, which were really alternative political processes running parallel to the parliamentary maneuverings, see Loewenstein, Karl, “The Bonn Constitution and the European Defense Community Treaties,” Yale Law Journal, Vol. 64, pp. 805 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 UiD, May 6, 1953.

28 Koehler Letter to Hilpert, May 16, 1950, Archive Doerpinghaus.

29 UiD, July 9, 1952.

30 Thus the CDU Federal Agent Heck in UiD, January 9, 1954: “Just as the spirit of the Basic Law does not allow a mixing of the authorities of Bund and Laender, so similar distinctions should be maintained in elections. In the Bundestag elections Federal issues are quite rightly in the center of discussions. In the coming Landtag elections, discussion and counter-discussion should be centered about Land problems.”

31 This speech came two days before the final Bundestag reading of the constitutional amendment which the government pushed through so as to rule out any further questions about the constitutionality of the EDC treaties. At this time, due to government changes in Hamburg and Baden-Wuerttemberg, the coalition parties also controlled a two-thirds majority in the Bundesrat, where the amendment was passed in March against only scattered Socialist opposition. This success did not lessen the Chancellor's determination to “coordinate” the upper house, as the progress of the Hessen campaign shows.

In the course of this struggle, Adenauer showed at times a decided indifference to constitutional niceties. Thus when the SPD, in reference to the Hessen campaign, accused him in the Bundestag of abusing his position by using “vicious tactics in an attack on the Land government of Hessen,” Adenauer replied disingenuously that it was not the Federal Chancellor who had attacked Zinn. “I appeared at the Parteitag of the Hessen CDU not as Federal Chancellor, but as chairman of the CDU.” Bundestag Reports, 2nd session, pp. 802 ff.

32 UiD, April 7, 1954.

33 Frankfurter Neue Presae, October 25, 1954.

34 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 29, 1954.

35 Die Welt, November 24, 1954.

36 Wiesbaden Kurier, November 19, 1954.

37 Institut fuer Demoskopie figures cited in Frankfurter Neue Presse, October 25, 1954.

38 CIVIS: Zeitschrift fuer Christlich-Demokratische Politik, Bonn, December 1954, p. 65Google Scholar.

39 North-Rhine-Westphalia Landtag Reports, July 22, 1954, pp. 14 ff.

40 Ibid., July 28, 1954, p. 18.

41 Ibid., February 16, 1954, p. 1016.

42 Ibid., p. 1038.

43 Ibid., p. 1016.

44 Der Merkur, 1956, p. 270Google Scholar.

44a Neue Zuercher Zeitung, June 29, 1958.

44b Neue Zuercher Zeitung, July 6, 1958.

44c Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 15, 1958.

45 Although discussed briefly in various general volumes such as Eschenburg's, the upper house has been the subject of only one published study, a highly legal and technical one, Schaefer, Hans, Der Bundesrat (Berlin-Cologne, 1955)Google Scholar.

46 “One cannot get around having to remark,” notes Muench, “that the Bundesrat President treated the questions of procedure in a rather light-hearted manner.” Archiv. d. oeffentl. Rechts. Vol. 80 (Tuebingen, 1955), p. 241Google Scholar.

47 (In the Bundesrat) “ … there is in process of growth a tight little world of its own, a tight and separate Bundesrat organism in which the permanent and changing emisaries of the Land Ministries are in their own metier, a world of a bureaucracy with its own laws.” Weber, Werner, Spannungen und Kraefte im Westdeutschen Verfassungssystem (Stuttgart, 1951), p. 91Google Scholar.

48

49 Dr.Dehm, Walter, “Vermittlungsausschuss als Schlichter,” Parlament, January 22, 1958, p. 8Google Scholar.

50 Brandt, Herr Willy, in Bundesrat address of December 1957, Parlament, December 31, 1957, p. 2Google Scholar.

51 Koettgen, Arnold, “Der Einfluss des Bundes auf die dt. Verwaltung,” Archiv d. oeffentl. Rechts, Vol. 3 (Tuebingen, 1954), pp. 68 ffGoogle Scholar.

52 Pollock, James K., “The First Year of the Bonn Government,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 13 (1951), p. 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Loewenstein, Political Power, op. cit., p. 305.

54 Kirchheimer, Otto, “The Decline of Intra-State Federalism in Western Europe,” World Politics, Vol. 3, (1951), p. 297CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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