Adam Ott

11-01-12

Blog 7

            When studying the electoral rules of various countries, one of the most interesting set of rules to consider are those of Germany. Germany has a multi party parliamentary system of government with a very large number of active parties when compared to the United States.  There are over 12 major active parties in the country, only half of which holding actual seats in the parliament or Bundestag. According to Duverger’s Law there are roughly 4.83 active parties in the country, which is a fairly large number of parties in office. Germany has a fairly unique set of election rules in that each citizen receives 2 votes for parliament. According to the Inter-Parliamentery Union “Each voter has 2 votes: 1 ("first vote") for an individual candidate in one of the constituencies (majority system), and 1 ("second vote") for the party list in the Länder.” ("Germany") So the first vote will directly elect the first 299 seats to office while the 2^nd vote will count towards proportional representation according to the State in which they live, and will fill the remaining seats. The first vote in the purely majority system forms essentially one large voting district which elects 299 seats, the remaining 299 seats are decided proportionally according to the 16 federal states forming their own voting districts (roughly 18.7 seats per district). Duverger’s Law holds true in both cases, both majority and proportional election laws contribute to forming a multi party system. In allocating the seats in both voting system, Germany uses a variant of the D’Hondt method known as the Sainte-Laguë method, which is slightly friendlier to smaller parties than the D’Hondt method. The simple difference between the two methods can be seen clearly here:

                              Sainte-Laguë                                                  D’Hondt

                                            .   

Germany does also have a threshold for both of their election systems, in the first vote majority system there is a threshold of 3 seats which small parties much win in order to be given seats in the Bundestag, and in the second vote proportional system the party must capture at least 5 percent of the vote in order to be granted their seats. This serves as a barrier to entry for small parties entering an already very politically diverse parliament.

            And so to briefly summarize, Germany uses a hybrid of a majority electoral system as well as a proportional system.  One elections day each voter is given 2 votes, the first one is used in a majority sense in which the entire country acting as essentially one voting district elects the first 299 seats and the second 299 seats are elected in the second vote which splits up the country into 16 voting districts. Candidates from the parties are selected using closed lists and there is a minimum threshold of 3 seats for the first votes and 5% for the second vote. The system helps establish multiple political parties, thus the reason there are 4.8 effective political parties in the state.

Works Cited

Inter-Parliamentary Union, "Germany." Accessed November 1, 2012. http://www.ipu.org/parline-e/reports/2121_B.htm.