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Comments on Marcus Kreuzer's Article

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Jonathan Sperber
Jonathan Sperber
Affiliation:
University of Missouri, Columbia
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Extract

Marcus Kreuzer's vigorously-argued essay on the progress of parliamentarization in Imperial Germany is an innovative intervention into a long-running scholarly debate about a central assertion of the Sonderweg thesis, namely the power or powerlessness of the democratically elected Reichstag of Imperial Germany. Plausibly dividing historians who have studied the topic into three groups: “optimists,” who perceive a steady increase in parliamentary power and a move toward democratic and parliamentary government, particularly in the Wilhelmian Era; “pessimists,” who deny the power of the Reichstag vis-à-vis the executive increased at any point in the history of the empire; and “skeptics” who point toward an increase in the power of the Reichstag, once again primarily in the Wilhelmian era, but deny that such an increase in power was leading toward democratic or parliamentary government. Kreuzer points out that underlying all three arguments is an implicit assumption of what a powerful parliament should be. Blinded by the “Westminster model” of British parliamentary government, he suggests, pessimists and skeptics have condemned the imperial Reichstag for not resembling the House of Commons. Yet the British governmental system represented just one possible form of parliamentarization. By systematically comparing the powers of the Reichstag with those of today's West European and North American legislatures, Kreuzer ascertains that the Reichstag was a politically influential parliament, thus demonstrating that the optimists have had the better of the argument about parliamentarization.

Type
Articles
Information
Central European History , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , September 2003 , pp. 359 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2003

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References

1. Kreuzer, Marcus, “Parliamentarization and the Question of German Exceptionalism: 1867–1918,” 335Google Scholar.

2. Ibid., 339.

3. Frauendienst, Werner, “Demokratisierung des Deutschen Konstitutionalismus in der Zeit Wilhelms II,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 113 (1957): 721–46Google Scholar. Quote from 729 and on the topic, 729–38.

4. Ibid., 736. Kreuzer's other example of a parliamentary vote of censure turns out to be a rejection by the Reichstag of budget authorization for several new diplomatic posts proposed by Bismarck in conjunction with his colonial policy in 1884 on the second reading. The Reichstag reversed itself on the third and definitive reading of the bill — not exactly evidence of great powers of censure or dismissal from office. Butzer, Hermann, Diäten und Freifahrten im Deutschen Reichstag (Düsseldorf, 1999), 180–81Google Scholar.

5. Lennan, Katharine, The Chancellor as Courtier: Bernhard von Biilow and the Governance of Germany 1900–1909 (New York, 1990), 210–47 and passimGoogle Scholar.

6. Kreuzer, , “Parliamentarization,” 343–44Google Scholar.

7. Ibid., 342.

8. More plausible on this point is Kreuzer's adoption of Margaret Anderson's argument that repeated dissolutions eventually backfired on the government.

9. Ibid., 344–45.

10. Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1871–1918, 2nd ed. (Göttingen, 1975), 60–72Google Scholar; cf. 62–63 with 67 and idem, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte 1849–1914 (Munich, 1995), 361–76; Berghahn, Volker, Imperial Germany 1871–1914 (Providence, 1994), 190–96Google Scholar.

11. Kreuzer, , “Parliamentarization,” 347Google Scholar. The author does not mention it, but there is a similar prohibition in Article I Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution as well.

12. Ibid., 347–48.

13. Ibid., 352–53.

14. Ibid., 338–39.

15. A good survey of state governments in the Wilhelmian Era in Nipperdey, Thomas, Deutsche Geschichte 1866–1918, 3rd edition (2 vols.) (Munich, 1995) 2: 609–20Google Scholar. On an earlier and failed attempt at parliamentary government in a federal state, there is the classic study by Gall, Lothar, Der Liberalismus als regierende Partei: Das Grossherzogtum Baden zwischen Restauration und Reichsgründung (Wiesbaden, 1968)Google Scholar. Werner Frauendienst argues (cf. n. 3, above) that the Prussian Landtag exercised considerable influence on the choice of Prussian ministers, but that was far from “full ministerial responsibility,” and, in view of the conservative domination of Prussian politics, hardly likely to be exercized in the direction of a democratization or parliamentarization of the imperial government.

16. Kreuzer, , “Parliamentarization,” 353Google Scholar.

17. Ibid., 356.

18. ibid., 19. For a skeptical judgment on the Bülow Block as a step in the direction of parlia-mentarization, see Lerman, , Bülow, 254–55Google Scholar.

19. Kreuzer, , “Parliamentarization,” 346–47Google Scholar. Whether this comparison with upper houses is appropriate, since the Bundesrat was, legally and constitutionally speaking, not an upper house, but the imperial governmental executive, is another matter.

20. Ibid., 347.

21. Plessis, Alan, The Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 1852–1871 trans. Mandelbaum, Jonathan (Cambridge, 1985), 16–21Google Scholar. The reforms introducing the “liberal Empire” in 1869 kept many elements of this authoritarian constitution. Ibid., 165–68.