Having lived in both the US and Germany, I’ve felt that the German government just functions better. Some of that is likely due to Germany being a smaller and more homogeneous country. But I think they also have a better constitution (sorry, U.S. founders…). Let’s start with the German equivalent to the House of Representatives – the Bundestag. I don’t promise to get all the details just right, but I’ll do my best.
The Bundestag is the German Legislature, their lower house. The Bundestag passes laws, which then go to the Bundesrat (equivalent to the U.S. Senate, the upper house) for modification/approval. Technically the President can veto legislation – but only if they think it is unconstitutional.
The Bundestag also elects other members of government. Along with additional representatives from each state, it elects the (mostly-ceremonial) President every five years. It also elects the Chancellor (equivalent to a Prime Minister – that’s Angela Merkel). Half the members of the Supreme Court are also elected by the Bundestag – that vote requires a 2/3 majority, in order to encourage more centrist choices.
Elections to the Bundestag happen every four years. Typically 3-6 parties make it in, and they negotiate a coalition government (the standard thing for parliamentary systems). Right now there are 6 parties in the Bundestag, and a “Grand Coalition” between center right (Merkel’s party) and center left (the junior partner in the coalition, because they won way fewer seats).
Bundestag elections are different from US House elections in several important ways. I’ll focus on the electoral system in this post, because I think it is the most important area of difference between the Bundestag and the House of Representatives.
Before I get started, I’ll just note some of the things I want to see in an election for the lower chamber of a legislature:
- Give everyone a vote of equal power
- Allow for representation that is nuanced, not just black & white
- Promote less frothy/grandstanding, and more problem-solving behavior by members
- Allow for viewpoints held by a reasonably-sized minority to be voiced in the government and influence mainstream political dialogue
- Ways for less privileged and/or less politically charismatic people to become a member
How Elections Work
Most importantly, every German gets two House votes per election – the first one for their district representative (“direct mandate”), and the second one for the party of their choice (“list mandate”).
There are 299 district representatives, and they are elected similar to most US representatives (except California, where we’ve adopted ranked-choice voting, yeah!!) – one local candidate from each party can run, and whichever one gets a plurality of votes in a district wins.
There are also 299 or more party delegates that are elected via the “party list” vote. Parties publish their lists of candidates ahead of time, and each voter votes for one party (e.g., I would vote “Green Party”). Seats are assigned based on the popular vote across the entire country, such that the overall composition of the Bundestag by party (including direct mandate seats) matches the popular list vote.
Some tricky bits:
- If a party fails to get more than 5% of the party list votes, it doesn’t get any seats assigned – this is to keep out fringe groups like the Nazi Party.
- People can run for election both as direct candidates and as list members. If they get elected as a direct candidate, their name just gets crossed off the list, since they’re already in.
- If letting in only 299 list members means that a party gets more direct seats than its share of the popular vote would have dictated, the other parties get extra seats so that the overall composition is correct. As a result, there may be well over 299 members of the Bundestag elected via the list mandate (on top of the exactly 299 who get in via direct mandate).
- For example, if the Conservative party gets 150 direct mandate seats in the Bundestag, that’s 150/598 = 25% of the Bundestag at its minimum size, just from their direct seats. But if they only got 20% of the party vote, then the size of the Bundestag needs to be increased to 750, so that they have 150/750 = 20% of all seats. Those extra seats would go to other parties that were underrepresented in the direct mandates, relative to their share of the party mandates, so that every party’s share of seats reflects its share of the popular vote. (FYI: My round-numbers example is pretty extreme – 50% of the direct mandate seats, but only 20% of the list vote.)
Tricky item #3 happens all the time, when people elect somebody they trust and who has represented them for many years with their direct mandate, but then vote for a different party with their list vote, because actually they agree more with the other party’s overall platform. Or maybe they want to shake things up locally via a right-wing direct vote, but still keep Merkel in charge via a conservative list vote. As a result, the Bundestag can have up to 800 members (which admittedly sounds a little unwieldy, but seems to work).
In Germany’s 2017 Bundestag election (results above), you can see how the yellow party (FDP) won zero direct mandate seats, but with 10.7% of the party vote they got 80 party mandate seats. Nationalist AfD (blue) did even better in the party vote, despite only winning 3 direct mandate seats. Meanwhile CSU got zero and CDU got hardly any party mandate seats, because they got a very high number of direct mandate seats but not such a high share of the party vote (probably due to people voting for those other two parties). Fringe parties like the joke/protest party Die PARTEI and the animal protection party didn’t make the cut.
Impacts of the German electoral system
The electoral process I described is complicated and wonky. But it has real, positive impacts.
The Bundestag reflects the people’s preferences
A true popular vote
The Bundestag’s overall party composition is directly dictated by the popular vote by party. What a concept!
There is essentially no incentive to gerrymander. Sure, one representative’s seat may be safe, but winning more direct seats won’t give you any larger of a governing majority after the party vote is factored in, so there’s not much point. For comparison, in the last US election, FiveThirtyEight forecast that Democrats would need to get 55.6% of the popular vote just to get 50% of House seats.
While the U.S. founders wanted to avoid political parties, the reality is that we have them, and that they are the primary organizations for setting overarching political agendas. The legislature is tasked with implementing a political agenda, so I appreciate that in Germany the legislature’s makeup reflects the mix of political agendas each citizen prefers, on a one-citizen-one-vote basis, rather than on a weird gerrymandered basis. I think this better reflects the actual will of the people, rather than the will of whomever is in power and gets to draw the lines.
Multiple parties, with more representative platforms
By having a dual vote, Germany allows the mix of represented agendas to also include those of medium-sized parties that couldn’t otherwise make it into the Bundestag. While fringe parties that get less than 5% of the popular list vote are excluded, everybody else gets in – even if they are too small to win a single direct seat.
For example, I would love to be able to vote for both Nancy Pelosi and a (reformed and actually viable) Green Party. But I can’t do that in the US – there’s no way a Green candidate could or should beat Nancy Pelosi. So we end up with only Democrats and Republicans, and that’s it. This can leave us stuck supporting partisanship and platforms we take serious issue with, without good alternatives (e.g., if you’re a Republican who doesn’t like Trumpism… what do you do?).
In contrast, Germany has a half-dozen parties big enough to enter the Bundestag. This allows for more nuanced party platforms that more accurately represent what their members want. For example, the center-left party can focus more on labor issues, and be somewhat green but not strongly so, while the Green Party can focus on climate change and gender issues, but less so on labor.
Imagine, for example, that instead of Trump taking over the Republican party, that a new party had developed. The Republican party could have stayed as the establishment party with more traditional conservatives, and the new party could have been the home of a more extremist/populist/anti-immigrant/nationalist movement. That is exactly what happened in Germany. The new nationalist party is winning lots of seats, and is able to very directly voice the concerns of its constituency, as you would expect in a representative democracy. It says lots of inflammatory anti-immigrant things and challenges existing conventions around third-rail topics like Holocaust remembrance. But it hasn’t taken over the Conservative party of Angela Merkel, and it’s not a part of the governing coalition, because actually only a minority of people (whether in Germany or the US) share the party’s views.
Having multiple parties also results in a slightly less religious approach to partisanship. Some parties are more aligned than others, but the alignments do shift. It’s quite normal for someone to be undecided as to whether they want to vote center-right vs. center-left, center vs. far left, green vs. far left, etc. While there’s basically zero overlap between green and nationalist party members, I’d bet there is some between far left & nationalist. So while liberals demonize the nationalist party just like Democrats demonize the Republican party (and vice versa), there’s less demonization across all the other parties, and more understanding that sometimes there are just differences in priority/focus.
You can see these shifting alliances in the governing coalitions, too. State-level elections show a diversity of coalitions in state legislatures, with some combinations that are hard to imagine happening in the US:
- Center Right + Green
- Center Left + Green
- Center Right + Center Left
- Center Right + Center Left + Green
- Center Right + Libertarian
- Center Right + Libertarian + Green
- Center Left + Libertarian + Green
- Center Left + Green + Left
Local needs addressed
At the same time as the overall composition of the Bundestag is determined by party, every district still gets to elect someone to advocate specifically for their needs, to bring home the pork, etc. For example, Berlin has Green Party representatives who advocate for improved local bike infrastructure. There are also a handful of local mandate representatives with no party affiliation. With the dual vote, people can separate local advocacy from broader party platform issues if they wish.
I do prefer California’s ranked-choice system to a plurality vote (I think it’s more representative of the majority will), but maybe that would be *too* crazy in Germany? Then they’d have to vote for their top 2 or 3 candidates, plus their preferred party. I’d love it, but I might not be typical 😉
Room for more diversity, skills, and moderation
If a major party really wants to be sure someone gets into the Bundestag, they can just put them high on the party list. Party leaders can be assured of entry into the Bundestag this way, but others can also get in via the list vote.
The Green Party has a rule that the list always begins with a woman, and then alternates between women and men. So even if women don’t win as many direct seats, they will get added in as party delegates. Barring the tricky situation mentioned above, this means the Greens end up with ~50% women in their parliamentary delegation, every election. They are also developing recommendations for other ways to integrate diversity into party structures and decision-making, and will be voting on new rules later this year.
Different parties have different rules for how they create their list of people. Candidates may be up and coming leader types, but they might also be policy wonks with expertise in something important; because the Bundestag is relatively large, it can get more into policy details than US politicians generally do.
List candidates might not be the best campaigners, or the most charismatic leaders. They don’t need to be super partisan and work people into a froth to get them excited enough to vote for them. Yet because of the list vote they can still make it into the Bundestag, where they can do useful things.
I’m really not sure how parties select which people exactly end up on the list. I think some allow members to vote only for party leaders, who then select list members; others may allow for more direct voting by members.
More ability to focus on getting work done
Once in the Bundestag, members also have more freedom. In the US today, if a representative isn’t sufficiently “pure” for the more partisan members of their district, they risk a primary challenge and/or lack of enthusiasm for their reelection campaign.
In Germany, these pressures also exist. However, the list provides an alternative to the direct vote that doesn’t depend on any local purity tests (though the member needs to stay in the good graces of the party as a whole). And with elections once every four years instead of once every two years, members don’t have to continually campaign to keep their seats.
